


this town's just an ocean now

by louistomlinsons



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Accidental Cuddling, Childhood Friends, Exes to Lovers, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Light Angst, M/M, Miscommunication, OT5 Friendship (One Direction), Smut, Summer Romance, but don't read this if you're only interested in that because it's blink and you'll miss it, idiots to lovers, loosely
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-08
Updated: 2020-09-08
Packaged: 2021-03-07 00:53:51
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 31,053
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26298220
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/louistomlinsons/pseuds/louistomlinsons
Summary: “I have really great friends. Do you remember Louis? You guys were always hanging out when you were growing up.”Harry remembers Louis. HarryremembersLouis.Suddenly, his throat feels way too dry, despite the ice cream he keeps licking at. He chokes a little on a chocolate chip before saying, “I, uh. I remember Louis.”Her face brightens. “We have dinner every Sunday. He owns the house now. His parents moved further north, and he wanted to stay here, so they just gave it over. Now if you want to worry about someone being lonely, that’s who I worry about.”inspired by watermelon sugar, featuring picnics on the beach and boys being dumb
Relationships: Harry Styles/Louis Tomlinson
Comments: 52
Kudos: 384
Collections: Fine Line Fic Fest





	this town's just an ocean now

**Author's Note:**

> (loosely) inspired by watermelon sugar. it maybe got too long for a song that is two minutes and fifty-four seconds long.  
> sorry if you’re from portland, texas because i am not (if the details are wrong just pretend they aren’t) & as far as i know, harry does not have an aunt named mary but in my opinion i think i made her pretty cool  
>   
> this fic was written for the [fine line fic fest](https://finelineficfest.tumblr.com//). make sure you check out all the other great fics in the collection which can be found [here](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/FineLineFicFest//)!

It’s too fucking hot.

It’s the first thing Harry notices when he steps out of the airport, sweat already dripping down the center of his back. He had dressed for the plane, thick grey sweatpants and a hoodie, but had forgotten all about how fucking  _ hot _ it would be once he landed in Texas. He rolls up his sleeves and searches the line of cars for the one sent to pick him up and has to bite his lip to hold back a laugh when he notices the bright yellow Volkswagen beetle.

“Harry!” his aunt Mary yells, drawing his attention to where she’s parked further down the line of cars. 

He rolls his suitcase that way, listening to the wheels on the pavement, trying to do anything but think about how fucking  _ sweltering  _ it is. And  _ humid _ . 

“Honey, what the fuck are you wearing?” she asks, reaching for the bag thrown over his shoulder. He allows her to take it and throw it in the trunk, where he tosses his other bag before slamming it shut. 

He raises an eyebrow and takes in the outfit she deemed appropriate to pick him up from the airport in. “I could ask you the same thing.”

“What’s wrong with what I’m wearing?” Mary takes a step away from the car and does a spin, long skirt twirling away from her body. It’s a vibrant tie-dye print, and absolutely clashes with the hot pink tank top she’s wearing, but she’s never bothered matching as long as Harry’s known her. 

“Nothing at all,” he says honestly. “You look fabulous.”

“Good answer.” She pulls him in for a hug and whispers in his ear, “It wasn’t too late to send you back home.”

He laughs and steps back, already feeling the lump of anxiety in his chest start to disperse. He had been nervous to come spend the summer with her in Texas, but less than five minutes with her had proven that this was definitely the right decision. She walks around the other side of the car and motions for him to climb in the passenger side, and it feels just like the other times he’s come down to visit.

When he was younger, coming to visit his aunt Mary was Harry’s favorite thing in the world. His parents used to send him down for the summer every year from the time they thought he was old enough to travel alone, and they would spend those summers staying up too late, painting each other’s nails, and eating an abundance of ice cream.

It’s been three years since he’s come for a visit, though, and he’d been worried that things had changed. Mary doesn’t seem to be any different, just a few more wrinkles by her eyes when she smiles and longer hair, and it’s reassuring in a way Harry didn’t know he needed.

“I know you just got in, but do you want to stop for ice cream?” she asks, clicking through the radio stations. Her car’s too old to have an AUX cord, and she’s always denied Harry’s offers to help her put in a new sound system so she could play her own music. 

“I would love to,” he answers. “One thing, though. Can we stop so I can change first? I think I’ve sweat through my underwear.”

She laughs, loud and musical, a familiar and comforting sound. “You could probably use a shower, too. I was wondering what that smell was.”

“I don’t smell!” Harry gasps, hand reaching up to his chest, offended. “You’re just smelling the musty Texas air.”

It continues like that, bantering back and forth, until they pull into her driveway thirty minutes later. Mary helps him carry his bags inside and up the stairs to the guest room that’s always been more ‘Harry’s room’ than anyone else’s. He’s not sure if anyone else ever stays there, but he’s got his own posters hung up on the walls and he picked out most of the furniture in the room. 

Bags placed on the floor near the bed, Harry shoos her out so he can shower and change before heading for ice cream. He unpacks his shampoo and body wash and wanders into the ensuite, only to find she’s already stocked the shower with his favorite toiletries. Mary’s always been like that, anticipating his needs before he’s even thought about it himself. 

He tucks the extra bottles underneath the sink and turns on the water, allowing it to warm up before stepping in. It’s exactly what he needs after the long flight in from Maine, scrubbing away the layer of airport germs from his skin. He stays under the water longer than is probably necessary, until his skin is pink and the water’s started to run closer to chilly than comfortable. 

There are fluffy towels in the closet, the same ones that have been there every year Harry comes to visit. He wraps a pink one around his hair to help it dry and then another around his waist while he wanders back into the room in search of more weather appropriate clothing.

The Texas heat is shocking compared to the cool spring they’d been having in Maine. It’s just barely May, and winter is always just a bit more reluctant in Maine to relinquish its hold to spring. It’d been edging closer to fifty degrees when he’d left, still chilly enough in the mornings to wish you had a coat instead of a jacket. 

The same can’t be said for Portland, Texas, though, and Harry digs through his bags until he finds black running shorts and a white t-shirt. One last look around the room, just double checking that he’s not forgetting something, and then he’s bounding down the stairs to join Mary. 

She peers over the top of her book, glasses perched on the edge of her nose. “Ready to go, kid?”

“I’m not a kid anymore,” Harry protests weakly. 

She stands, setting the book down on the coffee table, and coming over to ruffle his hair. She has to almost stand on her tip-toes, which is not something that was true the last time he had seen her, but he doesn’t say anything.

“You’ll always be a kid to me, kiddo,” Mary jokes. “Now, let’s go get some of that mint chocolate chip ice cream that you love so much.”

  
  


The walk to Dotty’s ice cream shoppe is a short one, albeit absolutely scorching in the Texas heat. For being only early May, the heat is already almost too much for Harry to take. It’ll probably take the whole summer before he’s used to the heat and humidity, and by then it’ll be time for him to head back to Maine and enjoy the chill beginnings of early autumn. 

Mary lives in a quiet beach neighborhood, which means sand lines the sidewalks as they make pleasant conversation. Within an hour of being there, Harry already feels the sand getting underneath his fingernails and into his eyes, despite not even touching anything he thought had sand on it.

“That’s the only thing I think I hate about the beach,” Harry grumbles, wiping his hands on his shorts for what feels like the millionth time. It doesn’t do much, and he can still feel the grains of sand on his palm. “Sand gets everywhere, and I haven’t even technically stepped foot on the beach yet.”

Mary only laughs, head thrown back as she holds the door to the ice cream shop open. She gestures for him to enter in first, and the air conditioning is a welcome relief from the sweltering sun outside. 

“Mary, hey!” a brunette man greets from behind the counter. His smile is friendly, and he’s got ice cream stained up and down the front of his apron. Harry can’t read the name that’s embroidered into the fabric, but he doesn’t have to wait long to find out.

“Niall, how are you?” Mary asks, warm, like she’s greeting an old friend. If Harry didn’t know her so well, he’d think that they  _ were _ old friends, but he also knows that Mary greets everyone like that. She makes every person she talks to feel special, whether she’s known them for just a few minutes or for years. 

“Can’t complain, really.” Niall shrugs. He finally turns his attention to Harry. “You must be Mary’s nephew. She’s been talking about your visit for like months now.”

“You can’t go spilling all my secrets like that!” Mary teases, but it’s good-natured and her smile widens. “I have been excited for Harry to come visit. We’re going to eat way too much mint chocolate chip ice cream and watch horrible movies all summer long.”

“Correct.” Harry nods, fighting off his own smile. “Just be absolutely completely irresponsible.”

“Sounds as good a plan as any,” Niall says easily. “Mint chocolate chip? Cone or bowl? One or two scoops?”

“One scoop in a cone,” Harry answers and Mary gets the same. They’ve never deviated from their order when they’re together, but he knows that Mary gets something else when she comes alone. It’s their own special thing, one that Harry’s parents have never attempted to understand. 

Niall grabs their orders easily and hands them over the counter. He shoos Mary’s hand away when she tries to pay. He smiles warmly and tells them, “Consider it a welcome to Portland from me. There’ll be plenty of ice cream trips this summer.”

Mary rolls her eyes and slips the cash for the ice cream into the tip jar. Harry listens to them chat idly for a moment. He has no idea who any of these people are, and he doesn’t really want to, so he stares out the window. Outside, couples walk past holding hands and dogs trot happily next to their owners. In brief snapshots like this, Harry can see the appeal of moving to this area. 

He still thinks it’s too fucking hot, though.

“Ready to head back, sweetheart?” Mary asks, waving goodbye to Niall over her shoulder. Harry does the same and follows her back into the heat, unprepared for the way it rolls over him.

“How do you put up with this every summer?” he asks about the heat. His ice cream is starting to melt faster than he can really eat it, dribbling down over his thumbs. 

“You get used to it,” she says, like it’s that simple. “By the end of the summer, you’ll think sixty degrees is cold.”

“Right,” Harry says, but he doesn’t quite believe it. 

He has to shield his cone from the blowing sand the whole walk home, but it’s worth it for the way Mary laughs at him. Sometimes he worries about her, living alone, so far away from the rest of the family. He knows she’s happy - Mary doesn’t do anything that doesn’t make her happy - but it doesn’t stop the worries from taking up space in his mind.

“What are you thinking about?” she asks, and he also worries that she can read his mind.

“Do you get lonely?” he asks. “Like, without being married and no kids?”

“If anyone else asked me that question, I’d kick their ass.” She doesn’t look offended at all, though. “I have really great friends. Do you remember Louis? You guys were always hanging out when you were growing up.”

Harry remembers Louis. Harry  _ remembers _ Louis.

Suddenly, his throat feels way too dry, despite the ice cream he keeps licking at. He chokes a little on a chocolate chip before saying, “I, uh. I remember Louis.”

Her face brightens. “We have dinner every Sunday. He owns the house now. His parents moved further north, and he wanted to stay here, so they just gave it over. Now if you want to worry about someone being  _ lonely _ , that’s who I worry about.”

“Why?” Harry asks, furrowing his eyebrows. He finishes off the last of his ice cream and he feels awkward without anything to hold on to. 

“Oh, you know. He doesn’t date. His siblings all moved north with his family. He graduated last year, but.” Mary shrugs, but Harry can see the worry written all over her face, sees the way it pulls her eyebrows together and darkens her eyes. “He tells me he’s fine, but I think he needs to get out there. He’s twenty-three; he should be out going on dates and getting drunk.”

“He doesn’t have any friends?”

“Oh, well, he hangs out with Niall,” she says. “And Zayn and Liam? Did you hang out with Zayn and Liam?”

“Yeah, I did.” Harry’s throat feels like it’s closing, but he doesn’t have time to think about  _ why _ . 

They approach her front door, and Harry finally allows himself to look over at the house to the right. It looks almost identical to his aunt’s, just painted a different shade of blue with different colored flowers lining the pathway to the front door. He remembers walking up to that door plenty of times, letting himself in like he belonged there.

Now, he’s not sure the door would even open for him.

“Sometimes they join us for dinner, too,” Mary continues, not even noticing the way Harry is just barely holding it together. “It’s just Louis tonight, though. Didn’t want to overwhelm you on your first day back, but I also hate to cancel on him.”

Harry follows her in through the front door, savoring the way the air conditioning makes the hair of his arms stand up. 

“What-” His voice comes out thick, so he clears his throat and tries again. “What is Louis up to these days?”

Mary continues walking towards the kitchen, answering him over her shoulder. “He owns that bookstore you used to love. I don’t know if you knew, but he was studying some type of business degree, so when the old owner retired, he hopped at the opportunity. He’s left it pretty much the same. You should go check it out sometime.”

This is too much.

“Aunt Mary?” Harry calls, just loud enough that she should be able to hear him from the next room over.

“Yes, sweetheart?” She pokes her head around the corner, some type of food already staining her shirt. She’s always been a mess in the kitchen. 

“I think, um. I think I may skip out on dinner tonight. I’m feeling really tired from my flight, and it’s just been a long day.” He scratches the back of his neck, feeling awful, watching as her smile drops. She’s good, though, and she plasters on a fake one and waves him away with a wooden spoon.

“That’s fine,” she says, but he knows it’s not. Not really. “I’ll put some leftovers in the fridge for you, so you’ll have something if you wake up and you’re hungry.”

“Thanks.” Harry smiles gratefully and turns towards the stairs. Halfway there, he stops and turns around, heading back towards the kitchen. Now it’s his turn to pop his head around the corner. “Aunt Mary?”

“Yeah?” She doesn’t look up from where she’s mixing something in a bowl, biting the tip of her tongue as it pokes between her lips. 

“Thanks.” He doesn’t know what else to say, but he hopes she understands. It’s a ‘thanks for always letting me come here’ and a ‘thanks for basically raising me’ and ‘thanks for loving me no matter what.’ It’s a ‘thanks for doing the best you could’ and ‘thank you for letting me be who I want to be.’ He’s also just thankful she’s not pushing for answers as to his sudden mood change.

Mary looks up then, her green eyes softening. “Of course. I love having you. Now, go get some sleep and I’ll see you in the morning.” She waves at him with her wooden spoon again.

Harry laughs, darting down the hallway and taking the stairs two at a time. His room is exactly how he left it, both earlier this afternoon and the last time he was here three years ago. He strips himself of his sweaty clothing and slides on another pair of running shorts before plopping on top of the covers. 

He’s not sure how long he lays there, on top of the sheets, just watching the ceiling fan go in circles. Long enough that he hears a familiar voice float from downstairs, bringing up memories Harry’s been trying to pretend don’t exist for  _ years _ . 

Louis sounds happy, and Harry knows it’s for the best if he keeps his distance, but that doesn’t stop the tightening in his chest. He feels like someone’s reached in and started twisting, careless about what they may be damaging. 

Harry knows going downstairs means seeing someone he’s spent three years trying not to think about. It’s gotten easier as time’s gone on, and he thought maybe he’d be fine, but as he blinks away hot tears it’s obvious he’s not. Going downstairs means one thing only: repeating a summer from three years ago that he almost didn’t recover from. 

He decides he can’t stand the sound any longer, Louis’ laughter recognizable even with multiple walls and a floor separating them. Harry reaches into his bag and pulls out his headphones, wires tangled. Detangling them, he pulls up a playlist on his phone and starts it up, music loud in his ears. It’s not quite loud enough; somehow, he can still hear the laughter and happy conversation coming from the kitchen. 

It’s enough, though, for him to fall asleep.

*

Harry wakes up feeling anything but rested, but too late in the morning to try and go back to sleep. He checks his phone, plugging it into the charger since apparently he hadn’t the night before, and notes that it’s just past eight. It’s an acceptable time for him to roll out of bed, so he does as much, stretching his arms over his head and listening to the various parts of his body crack in protest.

The floor is cold beneath his bare toes, and it sends shivers up his body, goosebumps forming easily on his skin. He digs around in his bag for a t-shirt to throw over himself, making a mental note to unpack his things later. Right now, with his stomach grumbling and body desperate for a good cup of coffee, he’s got other things to attend to.

Mary isn’t anywhere in the living room or kitchen when he comes downstairs, but there is a note taped to the fridge telling him she’s run off to her spin class and she’ll be back before ten. She adds that she’s left money on the counter for him to get breakfast if he doesn’t find anything he likes in her pantry or the fridge.

He smiles to himself, already feeling better after having been in Texas less than twenty-four hours. He remembers this being his safe space, the weeks he would spend here every summer. She’s always looked out for him, and he hadn’t realized this had been what he’d been missing in his life.

There’s nothing in the pantry that particularly sticks out to Harry, unless he wants crumbs of some health cereal, so he decides to head out. He knows there’s a cafe down the street that they used to go to for breakfast sometimes, and he hopes it’s still there.

He dashes back up the stairs, brushing his teeth and attempting to make himself more presentable for public, before he’s out the door. Despite not even being nine in the morning yet, it’s already too hot, and Harry can feel his back start to sweat. 

The cafe is unassuming, a small white building that blends in with the houses around it. He’s not sure what it’s doing here, tucked away from any of the other businesses, but it’s convenient enough for him. 

A bell chimes overhead when he enters, soft and signalling his presence to the man at the register buried deep in his book. He straightens up, pushing off from his elbows, obviously about to go into his normal greeting, before he stops and a wide smile spreads across his face.

“Harry!”

“Zayn?” Harry laughs, a matching smile taking over his face. “What are you doing here?”

“I should ask you the same thing, mate.” Zayn’s eyes widen, like he really can’t believe what he’s seeing, disbelief written in the way his expression freezes. It’s almost comical, the way his eyes threaten to bulge out of his head. “No, really. What are you doing here?”

“I’m here for the summer,” Harry explains. He takes the last few steps to the register, and makes note that there’s only one other person in the small cafe with them, too engrossed by their book to be listening in on their conversation. “I’m about to start my senior year, and I don’t know, I thought it would be nice to come back.”

“What are you studying again?”

“Psychology.” 

There’s an awkward  _ something  _ between them, something hanging in between them that neither of them really knows how to address. 

“Cool.” Zayn nods. “What can I get for you?”

“Um.” He hadn’t even looked at the menu, but he remembers that he used to always get an iced latte and ham and cheese croissant, but he also used to split it with someone else. “Just an iced coffee and a chocolate chip muffin, I guess.”

“On it.” 

Harry watches him go through the motions, pouring in the coffee and cream and grabbing the muffin from the display case. Zayn doesn’t even ask if he wants the muffin warm, just tosses it in the warmer and waits for the timer while he stirs the coffee. The whole ordeal takes less than a minute before he’s sliding the cup and the baked good across the counter.

“Three-fifty,” he says, and waits patiently for Harry to come to his senses and pull out his wallet. 

He hands over the money and before he can stop himself, he asks, “How are you really? And Liam?”

“And Lou?” Zayn raises an eyebrow. “We’re good. Lou owns that bookstore downtown that you loved. Liam gives swimming lessons at the pool. I work here and teach an art class at the community college a couple nights a week.”

Harry’s genuinely happy for them, and it hits him how much he misses all of them. How much he wishes there wasn’t this awkward  _ thing _ hovering over them. An elephant in the room, at minimum. Harry knows that Zayn has questions - that they all probably do - but he’s not sure he has the answers.

Just as Harry’s about to say goodbye, run away with his tail between his legs and never come back, Zayn asks, “Do you need a job?”

“What?” Harry asks, sure he sounds dumb. The question is pretty straight-forward, actually, but. He’s not sure he’s heard Zayn correctly.

“Do you want a job?” he repeats, slower this time.

“I-” Harry shuts his mouth and purses his lips. Does he need a job? Not really. Would it be a good way to pass the time while his aunt Mary works during the day? “Sure.”

“Sure?” Zayn seems surprised by his answer.

“Sure.” Harry shrugs. “Why not?”

“Right. Well.” Zayn looks unsure, which is odd since he was the one to ask Harry if he wanted a job, but he’s always been kind of confusing. “I’m the day shift manager, so. If you want a job, we were going to hire someone to work days with me. And I think it’d be fun to work with you.”

“I’m only here for the summer,” Harry reminds him.

“We slow down after summer, anyway.”

“Are you sure?”

“Do you want me to take it back?” Zayn raises an eyebrow.

“No!”

“Then.” Zayn takes a deep breath. “Then you start tomorrow.”

  
  


His aunt is home when he gets back from the cafe, chugging a glass of water over the sink.

“Thirsty?” Harry teases, watching as she dribbles most of it down her front. “Did nobody ever teach you how to drink water?”

She finishes off the glass and sets it in the sink. “Spin class is  _ brutal _ .”

“Can I join you sometime?” Harry asks. He sits down at the breakfast island and unwraps his muffin. If he’d thought about it, he would have grabbed something for her too. 

“Yeah,” Mary agrees easily. “I go every other morning. I go earlier during the week, though, so I can get there before I have to get to work.”

“How is work?”

“Oh, you know.” She shrugs. “I take a lot of baby portraits.”

Harry feels his face soften. “Babies?”

“So many.” She nods, a smile softening her face. “Makes me wish I had one sometimes, but then they start crying and I very quickly realize that is not what I want.”

“I want babies,” Harry says. He takes a sip of his coffee, half of the ice melted already, but it’s as good as he remembers from the last time he’d had it. It’s sweeter than the lattes he and Louis used to split, but still enjoyable nonetheless, and with none of the memories that make his throat feel tight.

“Babies? More than one?”

“Lots of babies. So many babies.” 

“You’re so young, you already know you want babies?” Mary raises an eyebrow. “Honestly. If any other twenty-one year old said that to me, I’d think they’re insane, but I see it. It makes sense. You used to always steal Gemma’s dolls from her.”

Harry laughs, remembering. His sister used to chase him around the house, screaming at the top of her lungs until Mary had to tell Harry he had to share. There’s a foggy memory of Mary coming home from the store one day with dolls for both of them, and he doesn’t think they’d fought over them after that.

“Pissed your dad off, though,” Mary laughs.

“It did?” Harry furrows his eyebrows. He doesn’t remember his dad ever saying anything, but he believes it either way.

“He was so mad when I bought you that doll to play with,” she explains. “Even worse that it was a girl doll. I guess it was better in his eyes if it were a boy, and best if I hadn’t done it at all.”

While Harry doesn’t remember it at all, it doesn’t surprise him. Thinking about his father makes him think of the reason he didn’t want to go home for the summer, and it has something ugly twisting in his stomach. 

“Well.” Harry shrugs, hoping Mary doesn’t see the clench of his jaw. “I played with dolls. What’s done is done. And now I want lots and lots of babies.”

“No babies until after you graduate,” Mary warns, half-kidding, but there’s something in her eyes that makes Harry know she’s serious. “I need to shower because I smell disgusting and then I’ve got to get to the beach to take some engagement portraits. Will you be able to entertain yourself for the day until I get home tonight?”

“Of course I can.” He pretends to be offended, and she must think it’s good enough because she kisses him on the forehead and heads in the direction of her bedroom. The master is on the main floor of the house, and Harry wonders if she ever goes upstairs when he isn’t here. He’s frequently wondered why she doesn’t just sell the house and move somewhere smaller, and it’s tied to his worries about her feeling lonely without any family in the area.

Thinking about Mary being all alone here makes him start thinking about moving down here again, once he graduates. He’d thought about it more seriously a few (three) years ago, but it’s been so long since that thought crossed his mind. Apparently, it takes being back in Portland for less than twenty-four hours to be won over by its charm again.

He starts thinking about the things he’s missed, specifically, and that leads to a dangerous path of  _ who _ he’s missed because the places he’s missed have such specific memories tied to them. His heart aches for that summer before he left for college, staying up too late on the beach and trying to be quiet when he snuck back into the house. Too many nights with Louis falling asleep spread across the whole bed, leaving no other choice for Harry than to cuddle up to him.

More than anything, his heart aches for his friendship with Louis. Year after year, they would spend summers together, watching each other grow up. Now, Harry doesn’t even know what he looks like.

With at least a few hours to spare, he changes into something a little more lightweight and heads back out for the day. The neighborhood is a bit busier now than it was at nine, little kids riding their bikes and people with beach chairs tucked up under their arms. 

There’s a beach less than a minute walk from Mary’s house, just past a park behind her house, and Harry remembers sneaking through it late at night, hushed whispers so he and Louis wouldn’t get caught. He’ll have to visit again sometime, see if the picnic tables where they carved their names are still there, but he’s not quite ready for that yet.

He leisurely strolls down the block, walking past the cafe for the second time that day. He spots Zayn still inside, leaning against the counter as he writes something down on a small notepad. It’s busier than it had been just over an hour ago, Harry notes, but not so busy that Zayn can’t handle it by himself.

He keeps walking, stopping only to pet two dogs, before he reaches a miniature downtown area. He’s not sure what the official name of the area is called, but it’s where the ice cream shop is located, nestled between a small thrift store and a sandwich shop. Just a few doors down is the bookstore Louis owns now, and it stills looks the same from the outside.

It’s too early for ice cream, and he just ate so he has no need for sandwiches, so he stops into the thrift store. He’s not sure he has ever been in the store, and he wonders if it was something else the last summer he was here. 

It’s small, with just a few racks designated to a different article of clothing and a shelf full of shoes running along the back wall. There’s no one at the register counter that greets him when he comes inside, so he just walks over to the rack of t-shirts and starts browsing through them.

He’s just killing time, no expectations that he’ll actually find something he wants to buy, but the colorful patterns of the shirts catch his eye easily. He sifts through them, barely noticing the return of the employee to the register out of the corner of his eye. She leaves him alone to sort through the clothing, flipping through her book and peeking over it to make sure he doesn’t look like he’s struggling.

He isn’t really sure if he should buy any of the things he scooped up, but before he can tell himself no, Harry is walking over to the register and dropping the pile down onto the counter. 

“Find everything okay?” the employee asks, a teasing lilt to her voice.

“Yeah,” he laughs quietly. “Maybe too well, but.” He shrugs in a ‘what can you do about it?’ kind of way.

“These shirts have been here forever,” she says, folding them before tucking them into a bag. “I wasn’t sure anyone was going to buy them.”

Maybe he should be offended, but he can only laugh a little louder and take the bag when it’s handed to him. His total amounts to just over ten dollars, and he can already tell this might be where his money goes all summer.

With a whole day in front of him left to kill, he keeps walking deeper into the heart of downtown. He crosses the street to avoid walking past the bookstore, just as much of a coward now as he was back then. 

He stops into a few more stores, including a boutique with overpriced clothing that he refrains from buying and a home goods store. He picks up a few things there, deciding maybe he should finally revamp his bedroom at Mary’s house. 

It’s late enough now that he can probably head back, lounge around, and waste the rest of the day until Mary returns. He starts heading back the way he came from, but without even realizing it, he’s crossed the street and kept walking until he’s stood outside of the bookstore. 

Harry remembers the last time he was here - it had been a happy memory, but now he would do anything to erase it from his mind. 

He should keep walking.

Louis probably doesn’t want to see him, and as much as Harry wants to see Louis, it’s for the best if they just don’t interact. Best for the both of them. 

He opens the front door, anyway.

The bell jingles overhead, the same one that’s always been there. Inside, it looks much the same as it had every time he’d come here growing up. Harry doesn’t immediately recognize anything that’s been changed - everything the same from the wooden bookshelves to the worn armchairs tucked in the back corner. 

The store is small enough that he can see to the back in between the shelves, and he takes note of the few people browsing, but none that he can recognize. Harry knows this is a bad idea and that he should just leave, but his feet don’t seem to get the memo as they start walking through the aisles of books.

“Anything I can help you find?” someone asks, startling him.

Harry spins around, not recognizing the man speaking to him. He tries to get his heartbeat under control for a few seconds before answering, “Uh, no. I’m good. Thanks, though.”

The man smiles politely and turns, walking away. Harry’s not sure what he wanted to gain by coming in, but now he feels shaky and lightheaded. He has to get out.

He quickly walks back towards the door, not making eye contact with anyone. He’s too afraid of what he might see hidden between the stacks of books. 

The humidity outside feels stifling, like it’s settled deep within his lungs and made a permanent home for itself. He finds it harder to breathe with every inhale, panicking as he starts in the direction of Mary’s house. He just has to hold it together until he gets there, and then he can break down. 

Once Mary’s house is in view, Harry finds it almost impossible to keep the tears from spilling out of his eyes. He wipes them away as quickly as they fall, eyes burning and vision blurring as he makes his way up the walkway to the front door. He’s inside before the worst of it, collapsing down the closed door to the floor, hot tears sliding down his cheeks.

He hasn’t cried like this  _ about _ this since the summer after his freshman year, when he didn’t come back, breaking his six year streak of spending every summer in Portland. He’d finished up his first year at school and decided he was too cowardly to face the music, instead subjecting himself to a summer spent inside a stuffy house in Maine. 

Unaware of time passing, Harry stays on the floor, knees curled up to his chest with his arms wrapped around. Eventually, he runs out of tears but doesn’t move, keeping his forehead rested on his boney knees, the pressure all that keeps him anchored.

He realizes he probably shouldn’t let Mary find him like this, curled up in a ball on her entryway floor, so he pushes himself and makes his way up the stairs. It takes way more energy than it should, dragging his feet until he collapses in a pile onto the bed. The softness of the sheets and the heaviness of his eyelids after a good cry lull himself to sleep easily.

*

The next day starts off much the same, waking up and realizing Mary has no food in her house, money left on the counter for him. There’s no note this time, and Harry figures she’s already headed out to work for the day. Thinking of Mary off to work, he remembers Zayn telling him he could start at the cafe, but never specified the time. Harry figures now is as good of a time as any, showering quickly and dressing how he hopes is an appropriate way to serve coffee and pastries.

Zayn is wiping down a counter when he enters, looking up and smiling easily once he sees who it is.

“Hey, mate,” he says, setting the rag down. “I was wondering when you’d show up.”

“You never told me when,” Harry says with a laugh, shrugging his shoulders. “I came over as soon as I woke up.”

“Yeah, I really just need you to sign some paperwork and then give you your real schedule. I don’t even know what your availability is like. Is your number still the same?”

“Uh, yeah, it is,” Harry answers awkwardly. He slips his hands into his pockets and rocks back onto his heels, suddenly feeling unsure of himself. 

“Cool, that way I can text you if I need you or don’t need you or whatever.” Zayn grabs the rag from the counter and tosses it underneath somewhere, hidden from Harry’s view. “And also text you when I want to hang out because it’s been three fucking years and I miss you.”

Harry doesn’t try to fight the smile that tugs his lips upwards. “I miss you too. I can’t believe we really haven’t talked in three years.”

“I tried, if you’ll remember,” Zayn says. “All of my texts when unanswered, which is why I wondered if maybe your number changed.”

“No, I uh.” Harry swallows, clearing his throat. “I don’t have a good excuse. I shouldn’t have just stopped talking to you like that. You and Liam. You guys didn’t do anything wrong.”

“And Lou?” Zayn raises an eyebrow, leaning back against the counter. Harry’s thankful for the space between them, giving him the room he needs to breathe.

“It’s complicated,” he says. 

It’s not, really. It was anything but complicated. Whatever he and Louis had was the least complicated thing in Harry’s life when everything felt so out of his control. He wonders if maybe that feeling, the feeling he got whenever he was around Louis, was the unconscious reason he thought he needed to come back here for the summer. Everything feels so up in the air, one last year left of university before he has to figure it all out, and his brain pushed him here, where he’d always felt so safe and loved, no matter what.

“Is it?” Zayn asks, calling him out on it. “It never really seemed all that complicated to me.”

Harry doesn’t really have much more to say about it, and they both know this isn’t the time or the place to have any conversation about what went down between him and Louis. He clears his throat and claps his hands together, trying to clear the air.

“So, uh, I’m available quite literally all the time.”

It seems to do the trick because Zayn pulls out a packet of papers from behind the counter somewhere and sets it down with a pen, and Harry spends the next hour filling out his information and learning the basics he’ll need to know for his first day. 

Conversation flows easily between them, almost as if no time has passed at all. Harry learns that Zayn and Liam have become good friends with Niall who he’d met at the ice cream shop, and he says they get together a few times a week to play board games or have a bonfire on the beach. 

“You should come sometime,” he says, an eyebrow raised.

“Is it  _ just _ you, Niall, and Liam?” Harry asks, although he can guess the answer.

“No. Louis usually joins us.”

“I think I’m going to have to pass for now,” he says, heart dropping a little. He wants to hang out with them. He knows it’ll be a boring summer if all he does is work at a cafe and wait around for his  _ aunt _ to be free to spend time with him, but he can’t see Louis again just yet. And even if he was in the place where he could even  _ think _ of Louis without his heart splitting in half, they definitely need to talk. Harry owes him that.

“I figured, but.” He shrugs. “Maybe by the end of summer?”

“Yeah, hopefully.” Harry doesn’t want to instill any false hope in him, but he wants that. Wants to be able to hang out with his friends and have fun the way twenty-one year olds are meant to. 

He finishes the rest of the paperwork easily enough, thanking Zayn for giving him something to do to get him out of the house during the day, and heads off with a promise to be back for his first official day at nine tomorrow. 

Mary comes home a few hours after him, waking him up from his nap on the couch by whacking him on the head with a pillow and proclaiming she’s brought home dinner.

It takes them forever to eat, as it always does, laughing between bites of food and catching up on all the things she’s missed in Harry’s life since the last time he’s visited. As they do the dishes together, he wonders if this is how the rest of summer will pass - working, avoiding Louis, and his aunt as his only friend to hang out with.

There are worse alternatives, he decides.

For example, not being able to avoid Louis for the summer would be worse. He has no idea what to say to him, how to explain his radio silence, and he doubts Louis even  _ wants  _ him to. 

Maybe he’ll come up with a whole list of prepared excuses for every Sunday when Mary asks him to join them for dinner. 

He pops in his headphones, soft music playing in his ears, as he starts to do just that. Somewhere between thinking, “ _ sorry I’ve got a sunburn on my ass and I can’t sit down _ ” and “ _ I told Zayn I would go feed his cat _ ,” he falls asleep.

*

Pretty much every shift he works with Zayn, he asks Harry to hang out. It’d be different if he was asking for just the two of them, or with Niall and Liam, but he always makes such a point to mention that Louis will be there too.

Harry knows it’s probably so he’s aware he wouldn’t ever be blindsided if he agreed to come to the beach for a bonfire or to Liam’s for a game night, but it also feels very pointed. Why keep asking if he knows Harry isn’t going to say yes if Louis is there? He’s wasting his breath, but if he wants to do that, Harry won’t stop him. 

No matter how annoying it gets.

It’s his third shift at the cafe, and the third time Zayn has asked him to do something later that night. He always receives the same answer, but Harry admires his persistence.

“I’ll break you down one day,” Zayn says, laughing. He tosses a rag over the counter to Harry, motioning towards a recently abandoned table for him to wipe down.

“Why are you so eager to get me to come hang out with you guys?” Harry asks. “I’m genuinely curious. It doesn’t seem to me like Louis would even want me around.”

“How would you know that? You don’t ever join us,” Zayn counters.

Harry snorts because, well, he has a point. 

He finishes wiping down the table and joins Zayn back behind the counter. Their morning rush has long since passed, and he knows it’s only a matter of time before Zayn tells him to go home. It’s still too early in the summer for them to get busy in the afternoon, and Zayn always kicks him out once he’s done with the cleaning up.

“Does Louis want me around?” Harry asks, because it seems like the logical thing to ask then.

Zayn shrugs. “He hasn’t said he doesn’t.”

“That’s not really an answer.”

“Why don’t you call him?”

There are plenty of reasons that Harry doesn’t call him - the first one being that he  _ knows _ Louis doesn’t want to hear from him. Louis had made that abundantly clear when he’d left that voicemail on Harry’s phone two months into his freshman year. Why would he want Harry around? Harry  _ left _ .

He doesn’t say any of that, though. He doesn’t know how. In his own head, it’s easier to think about all the ways he screwed up, all the ways he permanently ruined his relationship with Louis. It’s not  _ easy _ , but in his head, he’s the only one who can judge. Unless Louis’ filled all of them in on the ways Harry was a jackass after he left that summer, then they have no idea just how bad he was.

This has him wondering what Louis has told them.

“What do you even know? What did he tell you?” Harry counters, avoiding Zayn’s question (at least for now). 

“I know you left and you didn’t come back for three years and you didn’t bother to call any of us,” Zayn says, but he doesn’t sound angry the way Harry would expect. His tone stays even, as if he’s just laying out the facts instead of talking about the way Harry left and didn’t bother to look back. The way Harry left them all, not just Louis, and hasn’t even bothered to explain himself yet. 

“What do you know about that summer?” Harry feels like he has to ask.

It wasn’t like they kept whatever it was between them a secret, but more like they kept it private to themselves. It was obvious to everyone around them that there was something going on, but they were content to let people speculate, let people come up with their own answers. Louis once said that he felt like they might ruin things by letting too many people in, and Harry hadn’t disagreed. 

“Not much.” Zayn shrugs. “Louis didn’t talk about it and we didn’t press.”

“Oh.”

“Maybe we should have, though.”

“I don’t...I don’t know,” Harry says, and it feels stupid, coming from his mouth. He doesn’t know what else to say.

“All I’m gonna say about it, and then we never have to talk about it again if you don’t want to, but I do have this one last thing to say.”

Harry nods, staying silent, waiting to hear.

“What’s done is done. You can’t change what you did, what he did, what you both did that summer and the months that came after. You can’t change the fact that you didn’t call and you didn’t come back for three years, but you’re here now. What’s done is done and will never change, but you can do something differently now.”

Harry swallows around the lump in his throat, coughing to clear it so he can speak. “So I should talk to him?” His voice comes out deep, like he’s just woken up or maybe smoked an entire pack of cigarettes.

“I do. I do think you should do that.” Zayn nods, giving Harry what is probably meant to be a comforting smile, but it makes him want to cry. He doesn’t feel like he deserves Zayn’s niceness, and he can’t imagine that Louis wants to speak to him, but he doesn’t want to look back at this summer after he’s gone and feel like he’s made the same mistake again.

“Okay. I’ll talk to him,” Harry agrees, and they spend the rest of their shift talking about lighter things, joking in a way that Harry has missed so much, and something in the air has shifted between them.

Harry’s going to talk to Louis, he promises himself. He’s going to do it.

*

His first week in Portland passes, and with it, Harry uses the first of his excuses to skip out on Sunday dinner with Louis and his aunt. Mary is just as disappointed as the last week, but she lets him get out of it with nothing more than a stern look and a warning that he better join them next Sunday. 

He promises that he’ll be there, even though he knows it’s not the truth. 

It’s easy enough to fall into a routine, going to spin class with Mary every other morning before his shifts at the cafe. He works there Monday through Thursday with Zayn, and he enjoys catching up. They fall easily back into their friendship, slacking off while on the clock until Zayn remembers that he’s a manager and has to tell Harry to get back to work.

True to his word, Zayn doesn’t bring Louis up again. While he still continues to invite Harry to hang out with them in the evenings, they don’t talk about why he continues to say no. 

It’s almost easy for Harry to pretend that Louis just doesn’t exist. He doesn’t see him around town, Zayn doesn’t bring him up, and Harry’s managed to avoid having dinner with him. 

Which is probably why he forgets who owns the bookstore when he wanders into it after one of his shifts. 

He’d just wanted a few books to read, to occupy his nights since there were only so many hours of Netflix he could sit through before he wanted to go insane. A book was something he could take to the beach and read as the day turned from light to dusk. It was an excuse to actually get out of the house that wasn’t tagging along with Zayn. 

If he’d been thinking about it, Harry probably would have just ordered some online. Instead, he wanders into what used to be one of his favorite places in the world, overwhelmed by the new book smell and soft music playing from the speakers tucked into the corners. 

Harry doesn’t know how long Louis stands there watching before he notices, startling and then freezing with his hand on one of the books on the shelf. Scrambling as he thinks of what to say, he feels his heart rate pick up and knows his fear is probably written all over his face.

Luckily, or unluckily, Louis breaks the silence.

“Mary said you were here. Zayn, too. But I thought maybe they were playing some prank on me since I hadn’t seen you around. It’s hard not to see someone in this place. Unless that person is hiding.”

“I’m not—” Harry drops his hand from the bookshelf and tucks it into his pocket. His eyes dart to the end of the aisle over Louis’ shoulders. He swallows and tries speaking again, “I’m not avoiding you.”

“Say it again, but mean it this time, yeah?”

Harry had expected Louis to look angry. He had expected yelling and heated words and things neither of them meant, but this Louis just looks older. He’s not any taller, but his face has thinned out and he’s cut his hair. His eyes still shimmer, even from a distance, and they hold Harry in his spot.

“Are you going to say anything?” Louis asks, crossing his arms over his chest. He leans a shoulder against the bookshelf next to him. 

“You cut your hair,” Harry says dumbly. It’s the only thing he can think of. His brain has completely stopped working, has stopped telling him what to think and say. 

Louis reaches up and runs a hand through his hair, ruffling it, and it falls back into place perfectly. Harry’s envious, has always been envious of how he looks so effortlessly good all the time. 

“That’s all you’ve got to say to me?”

“You bought the bookstore.”

“Is your brain working?”

“No,” Harry answers honestly, shaking his head. “It is not.”

Louis uncrosses his arms and straightens up. He takes a step closer, and then a few more, until he’s standing just a few inches from Harry. Harry’s almost worried he’s about to get punched in the face, but Louis reaches up and tugs at one of the curls hanging down around his face.

“I may have cut my hair, but you sure didn’t,” he says. 

“What—”

“I feel like I’m seeing a ghost.” Louis takes a few steps back, putting the distance between them again. 

None of this is going down the way Harry imagined it would. He imagined some tears and a lot of yelling, for sure. His brain can’t seem to comprehend that Louis is in front of him, is  _ real _ , and isn’t telling Harry to get out of the store. 

“And you’re still not saying anything. Are you okay?” Louis’ expression melts into one of concern, one that Harry’s seen directed at him a million times before. 

“I’m—yeah.” Harry nods, clearing his throat. “I guess I don’t really know what to say.”

“An apology or an explanation would be nice, if you’re looking for a place to start.”

“I’m sorry,” Harry rushes to get out. “Louis, I’m so sorry.”

“D’you wanna talk outside of here sometime?” he asks.

“Yeah, definitely,” Harry agrees.

Knowing that Louis is at least open to having a conversation with him is enough to have his heart start fluttering his chest. He tries to tamper it down, unsure of what he’s getting so excited for. He doesn’t  _ really _ have an explanation for Louis, why he ran and never called, and he doesn’t even know how to begin to apologize. There’s a good chance sitting down with Louis to talk will actually only upset him more.

Louis nods, twisting his lips into something that could maybe be called a smile. “Yeah. Sunday? After dinner with Mary?”

Harry hesitates, and he knows Louis can tell because his face twists again, this time less of a smile and more of a grimace.

“Right. I forgot. You’re avoiding those.”

“Well, I guess I don’t have to do that anymore,” Harry says. “In the spirit of honesty, I was avoiding you, but I don’t think I am anymore. So, I’ll see you  _ at _ dinner and  _ after _ dinner.”

“Okay,” Louis agrees. He nods sharply, gives a little wave, and then disappears in the stacks of books before Harry can say goodbye. 

Harry doesn’t feel too much like shopping around for books anymore, so he retreats out of the store and decides he’ll just find something at Mary’s house to read for today. 

He enjoys the walk back to her house, using the time to compose himself just in case she’s home early for work, and pointedly does not look at the house next door as he walks up the pathway to the front door. He wonders how Louis survives in there, surrounded by all of their memories, and wonders if they ever crush him, the memories, the way they seem to crush Harry.

Mary’s only bookshelf is quite bare, and is mostly stocked with photography books, but he manages to find a romance novel that sounds worth his time and heads back out in the direction of the beach. 

This beach is always quieter than others in the area, and it is one he’s quite familiar with. He and Louis used to sneak out at night and lay blankets down in the sand, always accidentally falling asleep, only to be woken up by the early morning joggers running past them at sunrise. It was always worth it, sleeping on the uncomfortable ground and waking up too early, just to see the softness in Louis’ eyes when he first woke, illuminated by the oranges and pinks of the rising sun.

It hasn’t changed much since that last time he had been there, and he’s hit with memory after memory as he lays down a blanket and settles himself on the ground. The spine of the book crackles as he opens it, a sure sign Mary has never even opened the pages before, but he can’t focus on a single word.

Instead, his brain is attacking him, and Harry stops trying to push the memories away, allowing a select few to slip through.

_ “You’ve got rancid morning breath,” Louis laughed, wrinkling his nose and turning his head away as Harry went in for a kiss.  _

_ “Like yours is any better!” Harry protested. He kept his lips puckered, hoping Louis would finally give in and give him a kiss, even if it was only a quick peck of their lips. _

_ His wishes were fulfilled as Louis leaned in, his own lips pursed, soft against Harry’s. It wasn’t a quick peck, but there was no heat behind it. It wasn’t going anywhere too dirty for a public beach at six in the morning.  _

_ Louis pulled away, cheeks flushed and eyes bright. “Don’t worry, I think your morning breath’s worth it.” _

_ “You’re so brave,” Harry teased. He reached out and brushed Louis’ hair back from his forehead.  _

_ His back was killing him, stiff from laying on the ground all night. They did this almost every night at this point, and he figured eventually his back would either give out on him or he would get used to it. So far, neither had happened, but he wasn’t giving up hope.  _

_ A jogger ran past them, kicking up sand in their wake. Louis shielded his eyes but Harry was too busy staring, and as a result could feel the grains of sand scratch at his eyeballs. He closed them, rubbing at the sensitive skin until he could feel the wetness of tears try to push them out. Louis was laughing softly next to him, but Harry could feel the way he reached over and cradled his face tenderly until he could finally see again. _

_ “Time to go?” he asked, brushing away a tear from underneath Harry’s eyes.  _

_ “I suppose so,” Harry said. He didn’t necessarily want to leave, but leaving came with the promise of food, coffee, a shower, and fresh clothes. Maybe he could convince Louis to take a nap later.  _

_ Louis stood up, dusting himself off from the stray sand that managed to make its way onto their blanket, and offered Harry a hand up. Once they were both up, a mischievous grin broke across his face and he gave no warning before he took off across the sand back in the direction of their houses.  _

_ Harry packed up the blankets and took off after him, tripping clumsily, knowing that he would never catch up.  _

_ It didn’t matter. He knew Louis was waiting for him. Louis always waited for him. _

Harry shakes his head, hoping to physically shake himself from whatever trance the memory had put him under. He has no idea when that had been, whether it was from early in the summer, or from their last days together when the idea of Harry leaving had been hanging darkly over their heads. 

Either way, it isn’t something he should let himself think about.

He does his best to focus on the book opened in front of him, but he’s beginning to understand why it had been left unread on Mary’s bookshelf. The characters are boring, the storyline basically impossible to follow, and there’s nothing interesting about it to hold his attention. Just thirty pages in, he isn't even reading the words on the page any longer, just skimming his eyes over big chunks of text and hoping he absorbs it that way.

He finally gives up, shutting the book and setting it on the blanket next to him. He leans back on the soft fabric and squints up the sky. The sun is bright overhead, nearing its way to the horizon as the afternoon wears on, and he didn’t think to bring sunglasses, but he doesn’t feel like heading back home just yet.

There aren’t many other people around, and as long as Harry keeps his eyes closed, he can pretend he’s the only one out there. 

Unfortunately that peace doesn’t last very long. 

“Harry!”

Harry cracks one eye open, hesitant against the bright sun. He can’t see very clearly who it is standing over him, but he thinks he has an idea.

“Liam?” he asks, opening both eyes and sitting up now. Sure enough, after his eyes adjust to the light, he can see that it is Liam standing there in front of him, wide smile breaking across his face.

“I was worried I wasn’t going to get to see you, man,” he says. “Zayn said you didn’t want to hang out with us.”

“It’s not that I don’t want to hang out with you, it’s just that I don’t want to hang out with—”

“—Louis, I know,” Liam finishes for him. “That’s what Zayn said.”

“Sorry,” Harry says, but at this point he isn’t even sure what he’s apologizing for. Is he sorry that he left and ditched them all? Is he sorry that he’s continuing to ditch them, unable to learn from his past mistakes? Is he sorry that he’s seriously considered asking them to hang out without Louis?

Liam plops down on the blanket next to him, dusting sand off the bare skin of his legs. He doesn’t look much different than the last time Harry saw him, now that he isn’t blinded by the sun and can actually get a good look at him. He’s broader maybe, hair longer, but he’s still got those warm brown eyes that Harry always knew he could trust and a kindness to his smile he hasn’t been able to find in anyone else.

“So what’s new?” 

Harry isn’t sure how to answer, whether the question is loaded or not. Instead, he shrugs, not answering at all. “What’s new with you? Zayn told me you’re a lifeguard.”

“Yeah, yeah. And I also teach swimming lessons. It’s a good way to make money and I enjoy being outside.”

“Is that a year round gig?” Harry asks, genuinely curious. He knows the weather is warm all year, but he doesn’t think it’s warm enough to swim outside. He could be wrong though— he’d only ever visited Portland in the summers. He had no idea what a Texas winter was like.

Liam laughs, a sound so familiar to Harry that his heart aches, craving summers he hadn’t thought about in so long. Maybe it wasn’t only Louis that Harry was running from. If he hadn’t run into the cafe Zayn worked at, would he have reached out to either him or Liam? Would he have been too afraid of the ghosts he would conjure in his own mind? 

Thankfully, he doesn’t have to think about it. Fate works in mysterious ways, and all that. Harry’s never been too big of a believer, but maybe there was a reason he ran into Zayn on his literal second day back in town.

“Indoors, yeah,” Liam answers, and it’s enough to bring Harry back to the present. “Not sure if you’ve ever been here in the winter, but it’s usually around sixty degrees. Not really warm enough outside for swimming. Still nice enough weather, and you’re not gonna expect snow on Christmas, but not warm enough to go for a dip in your backyard.”

“Oh, cool.” 

Harry isn’t sure what else to say, really. Out of the four of them - Louis, Liam, Zayn, and himself - Liam was the one he knew the least. Despite spending summer after summer together, they never really hung out just the two of them. Harry isn’t too sure why, but now it translates into an awkward silence that he doesn’t know what to do with.

“I know Zayn’s already talked to you, but I think you should hang out with us.”

Harry refuses to meet his eyes, instead shifting until he’s sitting cross legged and can drag his finger along the sand next to the blanket. 

“I, um, I’m having dinner with Louis on Sunday and we’re going to talk,” he says. “And if it goes well, I think I’d really like to hang out with you guys.” He looks up finally, and Liam’s smiling widely, eyes illuminated. “I think it’d be kind of a boring summer if we didn’t. What am I gonna do for the next three months?  _ Read _ ?”

Liam laughs again, crinkles near his eyes deepening. “How horrible of a summer that would be. I remember you and Louis used to buy what seemed like hundreds of books at the beginning of summer and make it your goal to read all of them by the end. You used to accomplish it, too, but that last summer you guys didn’t, right?”

Harry swallows around the thick lump forming in his throat. He coughs, trying to clear it, ignoring the burning sting of tears in his eyes. 

“Yeah, yeah. We always bought, like, twenty books each. I remember sometimes he would buy the most boring book he could find to see if I would actually read it all.” Harry smiles at the memory, eyes closing as he drags his fingers along the sand. “That last summer we were a little distracted with each other. I think we got through maybe two or three books.”

“What did you guys do with the books at the end of summer? Did you keep them?” Liam asks, and Harry’s grateful for the way he artfully dodges the elephant between them. 

“Um, no. We donated them, usually. I know Louis kept a few, but I didn’t ever keep any. It makes sense that he bought the bookstore, really. That was one of his favorite places in the whole world. If we weren’t at the beach, we were tucked into the reading nook in the back, in that little chair meant for one.” 

Harry looks up now, opening his eyes and turning to Liam. He takes a deep, shuddering breath and says, “I know I fucked up.”

If Liam’s surprised by the admission, he doesn’t show it. His face is as warm and welcoming as it always is, eyes sparkling almost golden under the summer sun. 

“I think you think it’s worse than it is,” Liam says. “Yeah, you fucked up, but I think he’s willing to forgive you, even without an apology. Obviously, you should apologize, but he’s going to forgive you. You were his best friend and he misses you.”

Harry bites at his lip, picking at the dry patches of skin with his teeth. It’s a nervous habit he’s never been able to quit, no matter how many times Louis used to pull his lip out from his teeth with his thumb and forefinger. As they got older, Louis would follow it up with a kiss, but without Louis around, Harry fell right back into the habit. 

“He was my best friend too,” Harry admits— not like it’s a secret to either of them, though. It was always HarryandLouis, inseparable during the summer months. Even when Harry would go back home for the school year, they would have weekly phone calls and text constantly. Harry’s mom would have to beg him to put his phone away at the dinner table.

Liam reaches over and grips to his shoulder, giving it a tight squeeze before letting it drop. “Just apologize, alright?”

“I will,” Harry promises, nodding. 

Liam seems to accept this answer, standing from the blanket and dusting the sand from his swim trunks. He heads off with a wave and a warning that he better start seeing Harry around more. 

Harry’s head is too busy to continue reading now, thoughts swimming through the thick fog in his mind. He closes the book without even marking the page and lays it down on the blanket beside him. Joggers continue on their way past him, oblivious to the way he’s just seconds from breaking down.

Maybe coming back to Portland was a mistake. He’s obviously never gotten over Louis, and no matter how their conversation on Sunday goes, he’s not sure how he can ever forgive  _ himself _ for leaving and not looking back. At eighteen years old, he thought he was doing the best thing he could do for himself— starting a new life and not looking back. At twenty-one, he knows that’s far from the truth, but he can’t go back into the past and change a thing.

All he can do now is apologize and hope Louis forgives him. Despite Liam’s words, Harry’s nervous. Louis has no reason to accept any apology handed to him, as Harry doesn’t even really have an explanation to give. The best he can do is say “I was a stupid teenager but I promise I’ve changed” and hope Louis misses him just as much and takes pity on him.

With the sun growing lower in the sky and afternoon giving way to evening, Harry packs up the blanket and his book and decides to head back home. He passes families on their way to dinner and people out enjoying the day when it’s not quite so hot but still mostly sunny, all blissfully unaware of the thoughts raging in Harry’s mind.

Mary is home when he walks in through the front door, cooking something that smells absolutely delicious in the kitchen. This is a first since he’s arrived in Portland— normally Mary gets home late, and asks him to save her a plate of leftovers from whatever he makes himself.

“What smells so good?” he asks, coming into the kitchen.

Her hair’s tied up loosely on the top of her head, apron around her waist as she leans over something on the stovetop.

“Stirfry,” she answers. “I always make a mess of myself, so your sister sent me this apron last year for Christmas.”

She turns and the skirt flares out, decorated in watermelon slices, and she’s definitely gotten some use out of it. It’s already fading, color duller in some spots than others. 

Harry  _ loves _ it.

“I’ll have to ask her where she got it. I think I want one for myself,” he says. 

Mary hums and goes back to cooking, giving it one last poke before she covers the pan with a lid. “I think we should buy some blank ones and try decorating them ourselves.”

“I think that sounds like a lovely idea,” Harry agrees, smiling. He takes a seat at the counter while she focuses on finishing dinner, listening to her talk about her day. She’d had to do several graduation photoshoots, and she moans that she always hates dealing with the parents more than she does the graduates.

Once dinner is finished, Harry does the dishes, waving Mary off when she tries to protest. “You made dinner, I’ll do the dishes,” he says, and leaves no room for argument. 

She keeps him company, though, taking a seat at the island. “So,” she begins, and there’s something in her voice that has Harry looking up at her, taking in her raised eyebrow and knowing smirk.

“Yes?” He turns back around and goes back to rinsing off the pan.

“I ran into Louis this evening, when I was coming back from the shoot,” she says. 

Harry’s shoulders tense, but he doesn’t say anything, just hums in the back of his throat and waits for her to go on.

“He said you came into the bookstore today. And that he can promise me that you’ll be at Sunday dinner this week.”

“Oh, did he say all that?”

“Harry.”

Harry sets the pan on the drying rack and turns around.

“Did you and Louis break up?” she asks, and by the way she asks it, so carefully, he can tell she already knows the answer. She’s probably known all this time, from the day he landed, when he passed up the opportunity to eat dinner with them. Maybe she’s known from the first summer he didn’t spend in Portland, opting instead to do an internship near his university. 

“I don’t think it’s called breaking up if you weren’t really together, but— to put a very complicated story into simple terms, yes, we did break up.”

“Do you want to talk about it?” 

He knows there’s no pressure for him to say yes, to actually sit down and tell her the story. There isn’t much of a story to tell anyway. And although it feels like all he’s done lately is think about it and talk about it, he hasn’t really opened up. It could be nice to tell her, to get an opinion from someone on the outside. She won’t hold back when letting him know he’s a jerk, but she’ll also hopefully give him some good advice.

He debates it for just a second longer before he nods. “I think I do. Let me finish up the dishes and I’ll meet you in the living room?”

Mary crosses the room and kisses his temple before exiting to the living room, leaving him with the room to collect his thoughts. He finishes rinsing off the dishes, allowing the warm water to keep him grounded, setting the dishes on the drying rack for now. He’ll put them away later, he lies to himself, knowing full well Mary will put them away in the morning.

She waits patiently for him on the couch, feet tucked up underneath her as she rests her head on the back of the couch, eyes closed. She looks so peaceful, most likely worn out from her long day, that Harry seriously considers leaving her to sleep.

“I can feel you watching me,” she says, not bothering to open her eyes. “Sit down and spill, kid.”

“I’m not a kid anymore,” he protests weakly, but does what she says anyway. The couch is less firm than he remembers, worn and loved. She’s probably due for a new one, but they both know she’ll hold on to it until it’s no longer functional as a place to sit.

She finally opens her eyes and leaves her expression blank, eyes warm and inviting him to tell his story.

“Can I just preface it by saying I was stupid and I’m still stupid, but not  _ as _ stupid?”

“Good start,” she snorts. She gestures for him to continue with a small wave of her hand.

Harry takes a deep breath and mulls it over in his mind for a few seconds, unsure where to start. How much does she know? He decides to give her a basic rundown of his and Louis’ history and then get into their last summer, where he really went and fucked it all up.

“I don’t know,” he says, which is definitely a good start. “I was in love with him. I mean, I don’t know what you picked up on—”

“I’m way more perceptive than you seem to think I am,” she interrupts. “Anyone with eyes could see there was  _ something _ going on. I didn’t know why you didn’t tell me, but I just knew it wasn’t my place to pry.”

Harry swallows, the lump forming in his throat making it almost impossible to do so. He picks at a loose thread on his shorts and looks anywhere but her eyes.

Taking a deep breath in an attempt to slow his heartbeat, he explains, “I knew you would love me no matter what. I knew that you knew I was gay, definitely, even though I never  _ really _ told you. But this was the only place I got that kind of love and support, really, and I didn’t want to mess it up.”

“Oh, honey,” she says, reaching over and taking his hand in hers, effectively keeping him from tugging on the loose thread until his shorts unwravel. “I will always love you.”

“Well, I know that now, and really, I knew that then. I was just really, really afraid to mess up the only place in the world I felt safe, and then I did it anyway.” 

He feels hot tears at his eyes, and he does his best to blink them away. He’s done enough crying over this to last a lifetime. At this point, he feels like he shouldn’t even be allowed to cry over it. He’s the one that messed it all up, not anyone else.

“How did you mess it up?” she asks, giving his hand another squeeze.

“I was in love with him, but we never talked about what we were, you know? Like, we were just having fun. And then I spent that whole summer afraid of what was gonna happen when I left and I went to school. When I moved away and started school, I just stopped talking to him. It was a total dick move, but I thought that’s what was best?” It comes out as more of a question than a statement, his pitch rising near the end. “I thought we both needed a clean break.”

“Why did you think you needed a break at all?” Her eyebrows pull together, obvious confusion written on her face.

“Because I was so,  _ so _ in love with him, and for him it was just casual,” Harry explains. “And if I didn’t break it off, then I was just going to end up even more hurt in the long run.”

“He didn’t love you?”

Harry shakes his head. “No, I don’t think so.”

Mary makes a noise in the back of her throat, eyebrows furrowing even further. Her lips twist as she ponders his speech for a moment. Her face suddenly clears and she drops his hand, reaching over and gripping his shoulders, forcing him to look at her.

“You didn’t see Louis that year after you left, and that summer you didn’t come back,” she says. “He wasn’t himself. Maybe I’m way off base and speculating here, but I think he loved you just as much.”

Harry shakes his head. “We don’t have to talk about that. You’re blinded because I’m your nephew and we both want that to be true.” 

Mary drops her hands from his shoulders and rolls his eyes at her. In moments like this, he sees his sister in her. Gemma is so much more like Mary than their mother, from their mannerisms to the slope of their noses. When she gives him that face, the one where she wants him to know she thinks he’s stupid, he can just imagine Gemma make the same exact one. 

He sighs and lays his head against the back of the couch, staring at the ceiling. He notices a cobweb in one of the corners and makes a note to himself to clean it for her when he gets a chance. 

“It doesn’t matter how he felt about me back then,” he says, swallowing around the lump of tears in his throat. “But I’d like us to make up. I miss my best friend.”

He feels her give his hand one last reassuring squeeze. “Here’s to hoping Sunday goes the way you want it too.”

“Cheers,” he whispers, and they stay like that until she decides it’s time for them to head to bed for the night, retiring earlier than usual, but Harry doesn’t mind. 

He goes through his nightly routine, brushing his teeth and rinsing his face before climbing into bed. His nighttime playlist doesn’t do much to slow the anxious beating of his heart, or stop the racing thoughts from shooting around in his head. He knows he’ll never get to sleep when he feels like this, but he closes his eyes and hopes for the best. When the playlist loops for the second time, he manages to slip into a fitful sleep, full of dreams of past summers, sleeping on the beach and kissing the taste of iced coffee off of Louis’ lips.

*

“Will you get the door, H?” Mary asks, slipping the tray into the oven. 

His first instinct is to tell her no, he doesn’t feel well, and he’ll actually be skipping out on dinner. Thankfully, Harry’s brain argues with itself that he promised both Mary and Louis that he would be at dinner, and now it’d just be disrespectful if he fucked off, so he trudges down the hallway, feet growing heavier with every step closer to the door. 

On the other side, Louis’ dressed casually in black joggers and a plain white t-shirt, holding a tray of brownies.

“They’re from a box,” he says.

“What?” Harry asks, eyebrows furrowing. “What are you talking about?”

“The brownies?” Louis raises an eyebrow. “They’re from a box.”

“Oh.” 

Harry doesn’t have anything else to say, already feeling awkward, stepping out from the doorway so Louis can slip inside. Harry can smell his cologne as he brushes past, still the same after three years. 

They’re silent as they walk down the hallway to the kitchen. The silence is loud in Harry’s mind as he tries to think of a time where the tension in the air was so thick like this that Harry actually thought he might be able to reach out and grab it with his hands. He can’t think of a single time, except for maybe their first kiss, when they both leaned in so close their eyelashes brushed together before their lips did and they laughed into each other’s open mouths. 

Mary spins around and wraps Louis in a tight hug, rocking them side to side, cheeks pressed together in almost identical smiles. 

“Hi, love,” she says, letting him go and turning back to chopping vegetables. “You can set the brownies on the island. Can I trust that you didn’t burn them this time?”

Louis laughs softly, lips twisting into a barely-there smile. “You can cut the burnt parts off of it.”

“What do you eat during the week when I don’t cook for you?” Mary asks. 

Harry slides in next to her, feeling awkward standing at the edges of the room, pulling out another cutting board to help her finish cutting up the broccoli and potatoes. Louis leans against the counter on her other side, arms crossed over his chest. To an outsider, Louis would look casual, at ease, but Harry can see the tension in his shoulders, the way he’s almost hugging himself around the middle.

Louis clears his throat. “Oh, um, I usually eat these leftovers one night for dinner. And I can cook myself about three meals, so I only eat like shit on the days I don’t cook one of those meals for myself. Sometimes I try to branch out and cook something else, but I can’t ever really get the hang of it. I figure it’s best to just stick to what I know.”

“I remember when you cooked us that chicken that one time,” Mary laughs. “It wasn’t very good, if my memory isn’t lying to me.”

“Oh, it was awful,” Harry says, snorting. He places the broccoli onto the tray, sprinkling it with parmesan and garlic without looking up. If he looks up, he might lose his courage to speak at all. “But I ate it all and felt pretty sick the next day.”

“And I apologized for that!” Louis protests. Harry does look up now, catching Louis’ eye and trying to bite back the corners of his smirk. “I held your hair when you puked. And, to be fair, we can’t connect that to the dinner I made. Mary ate it and didn’t get sick.”

“I don’t think I did eat it, actually,” Mary says. “I think I pushed it around on my plate until you two decided to go do something else and then went and picked myself up some takeout. Pretty sure that’s about the time where I decided I would always do the cooking.”

Louis makes an affronted noise, followed by a gasp. “Mary, I think you’ve just broken my heart.”

She shrugs, unbothered, sliding the tray of vegetables into the oven on the shelf underneath the chicken. She washes her hands off and then slips off to the bathroom, leaving Harry and Louis standing alone in the middle of the kitchen, unsure of what to do with one another.

“Is this how the whole night is gonna go?” Louis finally asks, arms returning to their crossed position in front of his chest.

Harry clears his throat awkwardly, shifting his weight from foot to foot. “No?”

“You don’t sound very sure of yourself,” Louis laughs humorlessly. The half-smile drops from his face as he sighs. Harry can see the squeeze of his arms tighter in front of his chest, one of the only signs that Louis is as uncomfortable as he is. “I don’t want to keep dancing around you the whole summer. I want to spend time with my friends and enjoy dinner on Sundays and, honestly, maybe I shouldn’t admit this, but we’re leaving tonight as friends. However the conversation goes, I miss having you as my friend.”

Harry inhales sharply and searches Louis’ eyes. He doesn’t know what he’s looking for — reassurance that he means what he’s saying? Anything to indicate he doesn’t mean what he says? 

He finds nothing in Louis’ eyes, expression hard and unwavering, but his words have calmed the anxiousness he’s been feeling in the pit of his stomach for days now. Before he can say anything, maybe a preemptive thank you for the forgiveness, Mary comes back from the bathroom and instructs them to set the table.

Dinner is a lovely baked chicken with vegetables, but Harry can’t help but feeling like he’s an outsider watching two people speak in their own insider language. It’s obvious the pair are close, and it’s even more obvious that Louis respects Mary. At one point during the night, he asks her for her input on changes he should make around the store. 

It can only be described as unnerving, watching two people he used to feel like he knew better than anyone interact in a way he just doesn’t understand anymore.

Finally, when he feels like he can’t take it anymore, he starts clearing their plates. Louis jumps up to help him rinse off dishes, and they quickly, but in silence. Harry rinses the dishes, and hands them off to Louis who loads them in the dishwasher. For the bigger dishes that can’t go into the dishwasher, Louis dries them off and puts them away into the cupboards that they go in. 

In the time that it’s taken them to clean up, Mary’s packed the leftovers into multiple tupperware containers. She tucks them into the fridge and tells Louis not to forget about them.

“I think I’m going to bed,” she says through a yawn. “It’s been a lovely evening with my two favorite boys, but it is well past my bedtime.”

“Mary, it’s like eight,” Harry says, trying to ask her with his eyes if she thinks she’s being subtle. 

She shrugs her shoulders. “And I’m old, don’t argue with me. Goodnight, boys.” She pulls Louis in for a hug, waves, and then heads for her room. 

The pair stands awkwardly for a moment, watching the doorway before Louis tucks his hands in his pockets, curling in on himself, and turns to face Harry. “Want to head out to the sunroom?” 

Harry pulls his thumb up to his mouth and bites at the skin at his nails, nodding. He follows Louis through the hallway to the back door and into the small sunroom attached to the house. Harry hasn’t spent much time, or any time at all, in the room since he’s been back in Texas. It’s a haunted room full of memories, and he closes his eyes to ward them off before they can overwhelm his brain.

There’s only a small loveseat and Louis sits down on it without hesitating, curling his feet up underneath himself and tucking himself into the corner. Harry plops himself as far as he can on the other side, hoping he doesn’t come off as awkward and stiff as he picks at the fraying edges of his shorts.

For as much as he’s dreaded this moment, Harry hasn’t thought much about what he wants to say. He twists his mouth, biting the insides of his lips as he mulls his it over. Every sentence he can think of he just shoots down, aware that no apology he hands to Louis is going to be good enough. How do you apologize for throwing away years of friendship with no explanation? For  _ no reason _ ?

“I was a dick,” is what he settles on.

If Louis expects something else, he doesn’t show it. His mouth twists upwards as he obviously bites back a smile. He nods once, agreeing.

“I was a dick and you deserve a really good explanation, but the truth is that I don’t have one,” Harry admits. “I don’t have anything to say other than I was eighteen, scared, and the best summer of my life in my favorite place in the world was ending and I wasn’t sure if it was ever going to be the same once I left. Leaving here, leaving  _ you _ , was like leaving such a huge part of me that it was easier to pretend I hadn’t lost anything at all than to face the fact that half of me was stuck across the country. Pretending Portland didn’t exist, that our summers here didn’t happen, felt like what I had to do to survive.”

Louis’ face gives away nothing, impassive as he takes in Harry’s words. After what feels like hours but is only seconds, he breaks his silence, “We never talked about Maine, when you were here.”

Harry shrugs. “Not much to talk about.”

“I feel like I know you better than anyone else in this whole world, even now. I know you’ve been anxious because your lips are red from you biting them so much. You’ve picked all the nail polish off your fingertips. I know what every inch of your body looks like, save for a few new tattoos. I know your favorite genre of movies, can recite your favorite poems, and your coffee order.”

If Louis’ trying to hurt him, it’s working. Harry winces with every word, internally curling in on himself. 

“Is there a point you’re trying to make?” he snaps.

Louis chuckles humorlessly. “Don’t forget that you’re the one begging me for forgiveness here.”

“Right, right. Continue, then.” Harry tries his best to smile, but he’s sure it comes off as more of a grimace than anything else.

“I’m just saying that I know you. I know what makes you tick and the foods you hate and the snacks you sneak in the middle of the night. I know the you sitting right in front of me.” He pauses, catching Harry’s eyes, holding his stare. “But I can’t say that I know the version of you that leaves at the end of every summer. I don’t know you outside of our bubble.”

“I can’t say that I’m that different outside of Portland,” Harry says. “I don’t paint my nails.”

“No?” Louis seems surprised.

Harry shakes his head. He settles back into the cushions, finally starting to relax. “I’ve never felt safe enough to do it outside of here. Mary went out and bought me a few new bottles when I asked her if I could come back this summer.”

“What made you come back this summer?” Louis asks. “When you haven’t for two summers, why now?” 

It’s a valid question, one that Harry’s been thinking about since he made that call to Mary, just barely over a month ago. As far as he can remember, it’d been a normal enough night. He was finishing up some end of semester coursework when he was struck by the almost overwhelming need to be back in Portland. He doesn’t know exactly what made him pick up the phone, but now, he’s thankful he did. 

“I really don’t know,” he says honestly. “Something in the universe wanted me to come back here this summer.”

Louis narrows his eyes. “I think you’re lying.”

Harry holds his hands up, palms out. “I’m not lying, cross my heart.” He lets his hands drop back down to his lap, nervously picking at the last remnants of his nailpolish on his thumb.

Louis reaches over and stills his hands, almost like he didn’t have to think about it. He pulls his hand away like he’s been burned, though, and it’s not hard to remember that they aren’t friends like that anymore. Not really friends at all.

“Okay,” Louis says, cutting through the tense silence around them. 

“Okay?” Harry asks, confused. He feels his eyebrows pull together, unsure what Louis means.

“Yeah, okay.” Louis nods. “It’s not that I necessarily forgive you, but I don’t want to be mad at you. Like I said earlier, I really don’t want to spend my whole summer avoiding you. So, we can try and be friends. I’m not saying it’ll be easy, but maybe you can prove to me that I can trust you.”

“I’d, um, I’d like that,” Harry says. “Thanks, Louis.”

“And come hang out with again, yeah? I’m sick of hearing Zayn and Liam complain about how much they miss you.”

Harry snorts. “They’re probably missing my voice of reason.”

“Your voice of reason?” Louis asks, laughing. 

“Yeah, you know. I was always the one who stopped you from doing crazy shit. Like that time you wanted to sneak out and steal your parent’s car to go to that party the summer I turned sixteen.” Harry bites his lip, holding in his own laughter. 

“Whoa, whoa, whoa. Curly, I think you are seriously misremembering that night,” Louis accuses between bites of laughter. 

Harry watches the way Louis’ face lights up when he laughs, the same as it’s always done, and basks in the easy way they’ve started to fall into their friendship again. He knows it’s going to be more difficult to get over than laughing over their dumb teenage years together, but it’s a start at least.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he lies. 

“If I’m remembering correctly, and I am, you stole Mary’s car and got pulled over for a speeding ticket,” Louis says. He points his finger at Harry accusingly. “And when Mary found out, she called my mom and told her and we were both grounded for two weeks.”

Harry throws his head back against the couch cushions and snorts. There’s tears in his eyes when he sits back up, smile matching Louis’ as he tries to catch his breath. “Nothing changed, did it? We still snuck out every night before and after those two weeks were up. Made us feel rebellious, even if we were just going to the beach.”

Louis’ laughter slows down, smile smoothing out into something softer. The light never leaves his eyes as he runs a hand through his hair, but Harry can see the walls going back up.

“Well, I think I should be going,” he says, standing from the couch. 

“Yeah, yeah—” Harry swallows, something thick forming in the back of his throat. “I think so, too.”

Louis looks like he doesn’t quite know what to do with himself, shifting from foot to foot. Harry’s never seen him like this before, this unfamiliar energy between them setting them both on edge. They don’t know how to act around each other yet, bits of broken glass decorating their pathway to becoming friends again. Harry’s hopeful, though, when Louis says goodbye and his smile reaches all the way to his eyes.

Harry feels his eyelids growing heavier, a sign that he should head inside soon and get ready for bed, but he allows himself a few more minutes to bask in the newfound lightness on his shoulders and the hopefulness that’s appeared after his talk with Louis. 

*

“Alright, now that you and Louis have made up, will you come to the beach with us tonight?” Zayn asks, leaning back against the counter. 

Harry finishes filling his cup with cold brew, setting it on the countertop before he turns to squint suspiciously at Zayn.

“And what’s happening at the beach?”

Zayn snorts. “We’re hanging out?”

Harry reaches for the vanilla syrup and almond milk creamer, turning back around without giving an answer. He prepares his coffee, stirring it until it’s all one color, avoiding giving Zayn an answer. Technically, he and Louis did make up, but that doesn’t mean he’s ready to just jump back into a friendship with him.

“You can’t avoid the question by ignoring me.”

Harry finally spins back around to face him, taking a sip of his coffee. It’s not as good as when Zayn makes it for him, but he’s told Harry that he won’t make it for him anymore now that he works there and can make it for himself.

“I’m not avoiding the question,” Harry lies, but it falls weak between them.

“Alright, so you’ll come tonight?” Zayn raises an eyebrow.

“I guess,” Harry says, sighing in defeat. He has no excuses, and anything he could say is going to sound like a lie. “I’ll meet you at our spot after dinner?”

“Do you remember where it is?” 

Harry makes an affronted noise in the back of his throat. “I spent every summer there for almost ten years. You think two years away could make me forget?” 

Zayn shrugs. He pushes himself off the counter as their first customer in over an hour meanders in. Before he reaches the register to take their order, he says, “Those two years away made me realize that I don’t know you like I thought I did. I’m relearning what I know about you, that’s all.”

Harry supposes it’s a fair point, but that doesn’t make the words sting any less. He goes back to sipping his coffee silently, jumping in to wipe down tables and take orders when needed.

When he clocks out for his shift, ready to head home and collapse on the couch for a few hours, Zayn makes sure to remind him about their plans for the night.

“As if I forgot already,” Harry scoffs. He fills up his cup one last time before heading towards the door.

“I didn’t say you forgot,” Zayn says simply.

Harry knows there’s more to his words. He’s going to have to earn Zayn’s trust back, the same way he will with Louis and Liam. He hurt them all when he left that summer. Sure, he was closest with Louis, but he and Zayn got into some shit together too. Zayn picked him up the first time he got too high and couldn’t calm down, keeping him occupied until he was sober enough to go back home. 

He knows he’s got his work cut out for him.

Harry spends the rest of the day collapsed on the couch in the living room, alternating between reading and napping lightly. Mary wakes him when she gets home from work and tells him she ordered pizza. He mumbles something, half-asleep, and closes his eyes until it arrives.

“Do you want to watch a movie after dinner?” she asks, hissing as she takes a bite of pizza and burns her tongue.

“Can’t,” he sighs. He sets his slice back down on the plate. “I’m hanging out with Zayn, Louis, and Liam.”

“Aw, just like old times,” she says, determined set to her brow as she takes another bite. It doesn’t look like it burns her any less than before, but she does better at masking her pain this time. “You should invite them over here sometime. I miss the chaos they bring.”

“We always were so loud, weren’t we?” Harry laughs. 

His eyes fall shut of their own volition as he thinks about all the times they would blow up the air mattresses and sleep on the living room floor. There were countless times, after watching too scary of a movie, where they would pile on the same air mattress and get no sleep, huddled together until daylight broke through the clouds. 

“I knew my chances of sleep were low whenever they stayed over, but it was okay,” she says. “I didn’t mind. It was nice to hear you having a good time. That was what was important. That’s still what’s important to me.”

He opens his eyes and gives her a soft, appreciative smile, just a slight twitch of his lips upwards. “I always have a good time when I’m here, I promise.”

She reaches across the table and squeezes his wrist, returning his smile. “I know.”

They finish dinner in relative silence, making a few comments here or there to each other. Mary’s always understood his need for quiet better than anyone else. He likes the company, but sometimes he wants silence alongside it. She’s always been in tune with it, content to stay quiet when she senses that he needs it, or filling the gaps in conversation anyway she can when she senses that he needs that instead. 

Harry wraps the leftover slices of pizza in tinfoil and slides them into the minimal free space in the fridge. 

“I think you need to clean this out,” he comments, laughing silently to himself.

She peers over his shoulder into the fridge. Finally, she gives a resigned sigh. “I suppose.”

Mary waves off his offer to do the dishes, shooing him upstairs to change into something just a bit warmer for his night on the beach. He’s had to learn the hard way that the scorching heat of the sun does not translate into the nighttime. There were too many nights spent stealing Louis’ hoodies and huddling together on the sand. Those aren’t options for him, anymore, so he throws on a sweatshirt and changes out of his shorts and into joggers.

Downstairs, Harry finds Mary curled up with a cup of tea and a trashy romance novel, already lost in her own little world. He reaches over the back of the couch and hugs her goodbye before he’s off for the night, wrapping his arms around himself as he walks the familiar pathway to their spot.

The sun’s just barely started to descend in the sky, hovering above the horizon. The closer he gets to the beach, the less he’s able to see it, hidden by trees and brightly colored houses. 

He emerges from the pathway, thankful for his joggers as the tall grass would normally have tickled his legs, finding only Niall waiting for him. Five chairs sit placed around a makeshift fireplace they constructed when they were thirteen, somehow having stood the test of time.

“Hey!” Niall cheers when he spots Harry, not standing from his chair but instead reaching into the cooler next to him and pulling out a beer. He offers it to Harry and gestures to the seat next to him.

“Hey,” Harry says, nodding as he drops into the fold-up chair. It’s seen better days, but it doesn’t collapse under his weight and that’s enough for him.

“This place is nice,” Niall says conversationally. He hands over a bottle opener that Harry accepts with a small smile. “It’s a shame we’d missed each other. I hear that I moved here basically just after you moved away that summer.”

“Yeah,” Harry mumbles absentmindedly. 

He knows Niall’s just trying to be nice, make small talk while they wait for the others to arrive, but his words sting. Harry tries not to think about the fact that Niall essentially replaced him in the group, as unintentional as it may be. He fled and Niall filled the hole he left behind. He wonders who had the foresight to set out a fifth chair for the night. 

He warms up to Niall quickly after that, easily charmed by the warmth he radiates and the way he treats Harry as if they’ve known each other for years. Niall’s in the middle of laughing through a story about the time Zayn had to come save him and Liam after they tried to bake after eating edibles when Zayn himself comes meandering down the pathway.

“What’s so funny?” he asks, an amused smile hinting at his lips.

“Remember when you had to come teach me how to turn on my oven?” Niall asks through his laughter. He wipes at a stray tear, clutching at his stomach with his hand. 

Harry can’t help but smile himself, imagining an unimpressed Zayn showing up to a stoned Niall and Liam. If he knows Zayn, and he likes to think that he does, he knows that Zayn probably just took over and made brownies for them while refusing to let them help him out.

Zayn gives an exasperated sigh. “It’s happened on more than one occasion, so I don’t think I’d very easily forget.”

“More than one occasion?” Harry snorts, unable to help himself. He closes his eyes as he laughs, clapping his hands together and folding in half. He understands how Niall fits so easily into the group, complementary to their shenanigans. 

When he straightens up, trying to catch his breath, he notices Louis standing at the edge of the pathway, smiling at the scene before him. Instead of it feeling awkward, as he might have expected, Louis’ smile seems natural, like he can’t keep it from spreading his lips thin and lighting up his eyes. In the setting sun, he’s golden— glowing bright in the way Harry has always loved so much. 

His smile slowly softens on his face, into a more neutral expression, as he steps closer to the group. His eyes flit over the two free chairs, one next Harry and the other next to Zayn, and he seems to debate for only a few seconds before he makes a decision. He marches confidently to the open seat next to Harry and sits down like it’s the most natural place in the world for him.

“I’m glad you came,” he whispers to Harry, eyes still carefully focused on the way Zayn’s trying to push Niall out of his chair without getting out of his own.

Harry smiles, despite the fact that Louis isn’t even looking in his direction. He doesn’t get a chance to respond before Liam’s joining them, emerging from the beaten path with a bright smile. He greets them all before claiming the last chair for himself, seated comfortably on the other side of Zayn. 

They’re arranged in a half circle around the makeshift fire pit, and chairs curved just enough that it’s easy to see everyone sitting there. Zayn whispers something to Liam, pulling a laugh from him, and Niall strikes up a conversation with Louis, talking over Harry, leaving Harry to sit and observe the new group dynamic.

His thoughts float back to before, when it was just him and Niall before everyone arrived, and he was thinking about the way Niall seemed to fill the hole Harry left behind. While he may not interact with the group in exactly the same way, loud where Harry was quiet, he does seem closer to Louis than the other two. The way they’re able to communicate with each other mostly through their eyes and unfinished sentences has Harry shifting uncomfortably in his chair, reminded of a time when that used to be him— when he and Louis used to confuse everyone around them, never completing a thought but always knowing what the other was going to say.

The sun continues setting, hidden behind the houses and trees by this point, shadows dancing across the sand as conversation grows louder. Harry stays silent, tucking his feet up into the chair as best as he can, legs definitely too long for it to really be a comfortable position. 

Louis seems to notice his discomfort, both physically and with the situation at hand. He quiets Niall with a brief wave of his hand and twists so he can face Harry easier.

“How’s school going, Haz?” he asks. Coming from anyone else, it might sound like he was just making small talk, like he didn’t really care about the answer, but Harry can see the subtle way his eyes light up and his eyebrows raise. 

Harry shrugs. “As best as it can, I guess. I graduate this year, which is cool, but I don’t really know what the fuck I’m going to do after that.”

“I’d be more worried if you did,” Louis says, laughing. It’s not unkind, a soft sound that drifts away into the fuzzy light of dusk. “What twenty-one year old actually knows what they want to do?”

By this point, Niall appears to have grown bored of this conversation, turning his back to the pair and joining Zayn and Liam in their heated debate about whatever movie they had just gone to see.

“Did you know what you wanted to do?” Harry asks hesitantly. “How did you end up with the bookstore?”

This time, Louis’ laugh is humorless and dry, almost like it surprises himself. “You were gone for three whole years— two summers— and we only made up yesterday, but it’s so weird to me that you weren’t here for that.” He flutters his eyes shut, keeping them closed as he picks at the unraveling thread of the cup holder built into his chair. He finally looks up at Harry, through his eyelashes, and the situation feels so delicate that Harry’s almost afraid to breathe. “It was tough. I think I could have used you around.”

Harry doesn’t know what else to say other than, “I’m sorry,” and he regrets it as soon as the words leave his mouth. Louis’ shoulders tense and he stares just past Harry’s shoulder, eyes unfocused, lost in his own mind.

“Forgiving you isn’t as easy as just saying I forgive you,” he finally says, eyes darting back, holding Harry to the chair. His eyes catch the last of the sun, the last sliver still visible through the trees and over the horizon, glowing a bright blue. 

“I didn’t think it would be,” Harry says, feeling like he’s tiptoeing a fragile line. 

There used to be a time when he knew all the right things to say, no chance of misspeaking. Now, he calculates the weight of every word before he says them, speaking them carefully. He wonders if Louis’ doing the same thing, overthinking until the sentences sound forced inside his own mind. 

Louis shrugs, posture relaxing. He must see something in Harry’s expression that has him lowering his guard, jaw unclenching as he pulls his feet up into the chair with him, curled almost into a ball. 

“My mom wanted to move. She wanted somewhere with four distinct seasons and a change of pace. She thinks it’s too slow here.” 

“How is she?” Harry asks. He mirrors Louis’ pose, pulling his knees to his chest and resting his chin on them. It’s a little uncomfortable, but he feels more protected like this, hugging himself tightly. 

“She’s good,” Louis says lightly. Harry thinks that, even after all these years, he knows Louis well enough to know that it’s forced. He swallows, Adam’s apple bobbing. “She asks about you a lot.”

Harry feels his eyebrows shoot up to his hairline. “She does?”

Louis nods, obviously biting back a smirk as the corners of his lips twitch. “All the time, actually. I think she’s hoping you’ll randomly text me one day. I haven’t even told her you’re back yet.”

“Mary hasn’t told her?”

“I, uh, I asked her not to,” he explains. His gaze darts down his lap, eyelashes casting faint shadows against his cheek.

Out of the corner of his eye, Harry can see Zayn and Niall goofing around while they try to start the fire, Liam looking on anxiously. When they finally manage to get it going, slowly building until it’s almost blinding in its heat, Harry focuses his attention back on Louis. Shadows dance across his face, eyes closed and head leaned back against the top of his chair. He’d look peaceful if Harry didn’t know how to look deeper, to observe the twitch of his jaw and the fingers clutching tightly as he hugs his knees to his chest.

“How much does Mary know?”

“About?” Louis opens his eyes and raises an eyebrow, but Harry sees right through it. He drops the act once he notices that Harry’s not going to elaborate. “She knows enough. I don’t know what you’ve told her, but I told her that I had no idea why you never called and that I didn’t know if I wanted to forgive you.”

“But you did,” Harry points out.

“I’m  _ working _ on forgiving you,” Louis corrects. “Like I said, it’s not as easy as just saying I forgive you. There’s work to be done.”

Harry lets the words settle between them, replaying them over and over in his mind like a broken record. 

“We’ve got the whole summer,” he finally says. 

It must be the right thing to say, considering the way Louis’ expression brightens and the smile he gives Harry doesn’t seem as forced. He returns it the best he can, feeling more hopeful about the summer than he has since he stepped off the plane. 

*

Harry starts to fall into a routine, settling easily back into life in Portland. A few weeks pass easily, waking up early to work shifts at the cafe with Zayn, read on the beach, have dinner with Mary, and then hang out with the guys. 

The initial awkwardness of hanging out with them again disappeared within the first few nights they hung out, beers and memories shared between them. Talking to Louis still feels like he’s walking on eggshells, but the jokes start falling easier from both of their lips, laughing with just their eyes, and Harry finds himself too quickly falling back into the feelings that had him running away like a scared little boy the last summer they spent like this.

Zayn teases him during their shifts together, when it’s just the two of them and it’s easier to be honest, but for the most part, nobody pushes him to talk about Louis. Even Mary leaves it to a couple of comments and knowing looks when they have dinner on Sunday nights. 

Harry thinks he could get through the whole summer like this, ignoring the thoughts swirling around in his brain like the wind before a heavy storm. Of course, he knows he’ll feel exhausted when it’s all said and done, heart drained and tired when it’s time for him to go back to Maine, but it’s better than the alternative— opening up to Louis and losing him again. 

Lost in his thoughts, he doesn’t even notice Zayn trying to talk to him until he’s being whacked in the arm with a wet towel.

“How long have you been ignoring me?” Zayn asks, dropping the towel onto the counter with a wet plop. It’s been empty inside the cafe since their lunch rush ended, and at this point Zayn is just keeping him around for entertainment.

“How long have you been talking to me?”

Zayn snorts, rolling his eyes. “So you haven’t heard a single word I’ve been saying?”

“No, sorry. Don’t be mad.” Harry shakes his head, fluttering his eyelashes dramatically.

Zayn reaches over and pinches his cheek until he has no choice but to squirm away, laughing and narrowly avoiding hitting his hip on the corner of the counter.

“How could I ever be mad at you?” Zayn jokes, chuckling quietly. He waits for Harry to stop moving before saying, “I was just inviting you to movie night at my house. We do it about once a month and you’ve got no excuse not to.”

Harry bites the inside of his cheek as he thinks about it. “I’ve got to work early in the morning and my boss is a real stickler about punctuality.”

“You’re off tomorrow,” Zayn deadpans. “Try again.”

“Do you really want me there?” Harry asks, turning serious. 

“Why wouldn’t we?”

“Louis included?”

“If Louis wasn’t going to be there would you come?”

Harry grimaces, figuring Zayn already knows the answer to that question. Finally, he sighs and relaxes his expression. “I guess I’ll be there.”

“Try not to sound too excited,” Zayn laughs, reaching over and clapping Harry on the shoulder. “We’ll have a fun time.”

*

Zayn’s moved out of his parents house now, into a small house a few miles down the road from Harry. His only options are to walk (which is hardly even an option), let Mary drop him off in her Volkswagen, or suck it up and ask Louis if they can ride together. 

He ends up knocking on Louis’ door, standing there with his hands tucked deep into the pockets of his sweatpants, rocking on the balls of his feet as he waits for Louis to answer. 

“I’m about to head out so whatever it is, make it quick—” Louis stops when he sees Harry standing there, paused halfway out the door. His shoulders relax as he breathes out, “Harry.”

“Can I get a ride?” he asks. 

“Of course,” Louis says, like that’s the obvious answer. “I was actually about to come over and ask if you wanted to ride with me anyway. I didn’t think Mary would let you borrow her car— I know how much she loves that thing— and it’s stupid for her to drive you if I’m already going over there. I’ve got to be at the bookshop early in the morning, though, is that okay?”

Harry takes a step backwards off the porch. Louis follows him easily, shutting the door behind him without bothering to lock it. 

“Yeah, yeah,” Harry answers, turning and heading towards the car parked at the top of the driveway. “If I’m really too tired to get up when you do, I’ll just make Zayn drive me home. He owes me since I’m such a good employee.”

Louis snorts. “You think you’re a good employee?”

Harry climbs into the passenger seat of the car, biting back his laughter. “Of course. You’ve never even come to visit me, so you have no idea what I’m like at work. I’m perfect.”

The car starts up, the same one Louis’ driven since he turned sixteen. It doesn’t look that different on the inside, seats the same soft fabric, clutter scattered on the floor and the seats in the back. The seatbelt still jams when he pulls it out, and he has to wiggle it around before it’ll click, but it feels comforting— like coming home to an old friend. 

He turns the radio down but not off, allowing it to fill the silence but not overwhelm the space. He backs down the driveway with ease, and it’s quiet between them as they drive down the street.

“Maybe I’ll come visit you,” Louis finally says, eyes focused intently on the road in front of him. The sun has just dipped below the horizon, everything bathed in a hazy light as the moon starts to climb the sky. 

“At work?”

“Yeah, where else?” 

Harry sees Louis’ eyes dart towards him, only briefly, before he focuses back on the road before him. Harry wonders if he’s thinking the same thoughts he is— about the nights they stayed up talking until the sun came up, planning Louis’ visits to Maine when Harry went back to school. It always seemed so far away; Harry couldn’t imagine Louis outside of Portland, outside of this space. 

He doesn’t bother answering and Louis turns the radio up, allowing some Top 40 song to fill the space between them, suddenly much wider than it was before. The rest of the drive is only a few minutes, but it feels like an eternity, with nothing but the sound of the radio and the breeze through the cracked windows.

Louis parks on the street in front of the small, blue house, looking welcoming from the outside. There’s plants lining the walkway and two rocking chairs on the front porch and he can spot the top of a tree in the backyard, just barely visible over the roof. 

“Liam and Zayn did all the landscaping themselves,” Louis explains, walking just a step in front of Harry. “It was their project last spring through fall. They refused all help from us, but I think it looks good.”

“Are they—?” Harry trails off, the rest of his sentence hanging in the air.

Louis must pick up on what he’s hinting at, twisting his body to meet Harry’s eyes and raise one of his brows. He shrugs, just barely, before he turns back around and twists the doorknob and waltzes in through the front door like he lives there. Harry used to do the same thing at Louis’ house, just walking in without even asking if he could come over. His mom fell into the habit of setting an extra place for him at the table for dinner. 

Inside is just as inviting as the outside of the house, lined with photos of Zayn’s family and paintings that Harry thinks he might have done himself. There are personal hints of himself everywhere, from the discarded shoes at the bottom of the stairs to the mug of paintbrushes sitting on the coffee table when they come into the living room. 

Nobody’s in the living room, but Louis stops there anyway, jumping over the back of the couch and sprawling himself out. He takes up the whole thing, foot dangling off the end and arms splayed over his head.

“And where are the rest of us supposed to sit?” Harry asks, even as he carefully sets himself on the floor, back resting up against the armchair. Harry thinks it looks vaguely familiar, like it’s from his family’s house. It’s well-loved, definitely secondhand, curved in at the seat and faded at the headrest. 

“You didn’t want to sit in the perfectly good chair?” 

Harry shrugs. “The floor is fine.”

“You’ll hurt your back.” Louis sits up, tucking himself onto one cushion. He pats the space next to him. “You can sit next to me.”

From past experience, Harry knows it’s useless to argue with Louis. They’re both stubborn at the best of times, and Louis always has to take care of everyone else. He heaves a sigh and pushes himself from the ground, plopping down onto the seat, sinking into the plush fabric. He could see himself easily falling asleep, even sitting up like this. 

“What movie are we watching?” Harry mumbles.

“Not sure if you’re watching any movie if you can’t keep your eyes open,” Louis teases, snorting quietly. Harry manages to open his eyes wider, but he knows it’s a losing battle. He’ll probably be out before the first thirty minutes of the movie. “I think we’re watching  _ Sleeping With Other People _ though.”

“Oh, I love that one.”

“I know,” Louis says, his voice so quiet that Harry might have missed it if he wasn’t so minutely aware of everything about Louis. “I picked it out.”

Harry swallows around the newly formed lump in his throat and allows his eyes to fall closed. It’s easier when he’s not looking at Louis. Even despite their time apart, Harry can read Louis’ expressions too well. It’s something that he thought might have gone away, and it has a little, but now Harry’s worried that he’s always going to know the core of who Louis is forever. That he’ll be eighty years old and know exactly what the twitch of his lip and soft sigh means. 

Louis doesn’t say anything else and Harry doesn’t try to break the silence. He listens to the sound of their breathing mixed with the rattle of the air conditioning unit working overtime in the summertime heat. 

He's almost asleep, breaths evening out, when Niall, Zayn, and Liam come thundering down the hallway. Niall’s yelling about something and Liam is asking him to be more careful, worried about dropping the popcorn all over the floor. Zayn’s quiet laughter can be heard through it all, warm and comforting. 

“I didn’t think it was time for bed already,” Zayn jokes. Harry reluctantly cracks his eyes open, watching as Liam and Zayn pile into the armchair and Niall lays himself flat on his stomach on the floor. He tries not to let himself think that it means something when Louis doesn’t offer to make more room on the couch for him. 

“These early shifts at the cafe are kicking my ass,” Harry says. 

“You get there are nine. Is that  _ early _ to you?”

He shrugs, biting his lip as he holds back laughter. “I haven’t had a class before ten-thirty since my fall semester freshman year.”

“You’ve never been an early riser,” Louis adds, cheeks flaming when Harry glances over at him. Shrugging and looking almost sheepish, he adds, “I remember I pushed you off the bed a few times to wake you up.”

“Maybe that’s why I have back problems now.”

“I doubt that’s why,” Louis snorts. 

“I’m sending you my next chiropractor bill.”

“Looking forward to it.” Louis rolls his eyes, but his lips twist into an easy smile. 

Moments like this, when they go back and forth like this, Harry can forget that Louis is missing from three years of memories. He knows when the end of summer comes around, it’s going to be even more devastating to say goodbye. He’s not even entirely sure what Louis, and even the rest of the group, expect from him when he leaves. Do they want him to stay in touch? Will they want to come visit him?

They hit play on the movie while Harry’s lost in his mind. He doesn’t even notice it’s playing until about ten minutes in, when Louis nudges him and offers him the popcorn bowl. He takes a handful and mumbles a thank you, but goes back to worrying about the future.

Worrying about the future is what got him into this mess in the first place. When he left that summer, he was so worried about what going to college meant for him. He already lived his life in two parts— the person he was in Texas would be unrecognizable to the person he was in Maine. He didn’t know what he was going to do when he had split himself into a third part, into the person he would be at college. 

Now, being worried about his future is the whole reason he’s back for the summer. He couldn’t spend a whole summer being asked what his plans were after graduation, especially when he just didn’t  _ know _ . He couldn’t answer their questions about whether he was going to continue to graduate school or if he was going straight into the workforce. He didn’t know and it was getting closer and closer to the point where that wasn’t an acceptable answer anymore.

Which is how he found himself calling Mary up at the end of April, walking out of his final exam for the semester, and begging her to let him come stay. She said yes without hesitation and he was on a plane by the end of the week. At the time, it felt a lot like running away, but now it feels more like he was running to a place where he knew he would be safe.

He used to think it was Portland itself that made him feel safe, with the beautiful sunsets and sandy beaches, but now he’s more sure than ever that it’s the people in it. Looking at Louis cuddled up on the other end of the sofa, feet tucked up under himself and blanket wrapped around his shoulder, Harry finds himself thinking, “ _ I’m home.” _

*

The next few weeks pass in a blur of days surrounded by coffee and pastries, and nights spent staying up too late and regretting it in the morning. Harry falls easily into old summer routines, heading out to the beach after dinner and coming home when the sun starts to color the sky again. It helps the time pass quicker, considering he was so worried he would have nothing to fill his days when he first landed.

Unfortunately, it makes the time pass quicker.

Before he knows it, summer is halfway over and he’s nowhere closer to knowing what he wants to do when he goes back. He has no idea about his future plans or what the end of summer entails for friendships he’s just started to repair.

Almost as the universe knows he’s freaking out, Harry’s phone lights up with a text from Louis, asking if he wants to come over and build a fort and watch movies. It’s not the first time Louis’ texted him, usually some random thing that happens to him during the day, but it is the first time he’s texted him with plans. Harry agrees without hesitation, antsy for the hours to pass until he can head next door.

If Mary notices his anxious energy, she doesn’t say anything. She tells him all about her day and the cute dog she got to photograph. He doesn’t have any stories to tell her, as per usual, days at the cafe still slow despite Zayn’s reassurances that they get busy eventually. Halfway through the summer season, Harry is starting to doubt him. If they haven’t picked up by the end of July in a few weeks, Harry will have the confirmation he needs that Zayn is pulling his leg.

She does, however, give him a knowing raise of her eyebrows when he kisses her on the forehead and says he’s heading over to Louis’. She still doesn’t say anything, but he can read the judgement in her eyes. 

He hesitates on Louis’ front poor, hand raised, debating whether or not he should knock. He slowly drops his hand down to his side and decides to just head on in, hoping he isn’t crossing any boundaries Louis might have put up.

It seems to have been the right choice, when Louis pops around the corner to the kitchen, waving him in with a wooden spoon coated in some kind of batter. 

His house is a mirror image of Mary’s, just decorated differently. There’s no theme to the decor, various knick knacks they’ve collected over the years littering every available surface. There’s art done by each of the kids lining the walls, family photos — both professional and taken by Jay — in frames on most free surfaces, and the blanket Mary knitted them thrown over the back of the couch. 

It’s always felt more like home than Harry’s house back in Maine ever did. 

“What are you making?” Harry asks, sliding onto one of the mismatched bar stools. They were all bought at separate times, not a single one even the same color let alone the same shade. The one he’s sitting on, he and Louis found at a local thrift store and bought on a whim. He vaguely recalls them talking about how cute it would look in a future home they would live in together. 

Back before they had even kissed for the first time, they would talk all about their future. They wanted to move away, maybe to the west coast, and live in a too small overpriced apartment. Their dreams of the future took on plenty of different shapes over the year, but the end goal was always the same— they wanted to be in the same place as one another. For so long, Harry thought that they were plausible, real dreams. That they would end up in the same place, that their goals would align. Now, he just wants to laugh at his nativity. 

“Brownies,” Louis says. At Harry’s worried expression, he adds, “From the box. Easy enough, I promise not to fuck them up.”

“I trust you,” Harry says, though the twitch of his lips reveals otherwise. 

“Right, right.” Louis nods, scraping the last bits of batter into the pan. He sets the bowl down and holds out the spoon to Harry. “Want to lick the spoon?”

“There’d be something wrong with me if I didn’t.” Harry takes the spoon handed to him and licks the last bits of batter from it, careful not to drop any onto his shirt. 

They used to have nights like this all the time. When Louis’ parents wanted a night away, a date night, they would invite Harry over to help Louis babysit. The pair would bake some kind of dessert, making a mess of the kitchen, and then watch movies with the girls until they all fell asleep in a pile on the couch in the living room. Sometimes they would build a fort, but most of the time they decided they didn’t want to bother with the clean up.

He washes off the spoon in the sink and sets in the dishwasher once he’s done, taking time to rinse out the bowl too. Louis’ already moved on, stumbling around in the living room, cursing to himself as he does something Harry can’t see.

Harry wanders into the room, laughing at the sight before him. Louis’ got blankets sprawled out everywhere, struggling as one corner keeps slipping off the armchair and collapsing the whole fort.

“If you just scooted the chair closer, you wouldn’t have this problem,” Harry suggests. “Or used a pillow to weigh it down.”

“You think?” Louis asks sarcastically. “Gee, I hadn’t even tried that yet.”

Harry shrugs. “You’re pretty stubborn, so I wouldn’t put it past you to just keep trying what you’re doing until it works.”

The glare Louis throws his way could melt ice, and Harry wonders if he’s crossed some sort of line until Louis follows it up with a tentative smile. Harry hopes that eventually he’ll learn where their new boundaries are— what jokes he can make and things he can say without reminding Louis that they’re almost strangers now.

“I was just trying to make sure there’s enough room for us without feeling cramped,” Louis explains. “We’re not as small as we used to be.”

Harry huffs a laugh, sizing Louis up. He can read between the lines;  _ Harry’s  _ not as small as he used to be. He remembers kissing Louis that summer, being able to look straight into Louis’ eyes when standing. Now, Louis’d have to get up on his toes, if only a little, just to align their mouths. 

That’s not necessarily a safe path for Harry’s mind to go down, so he shakes his head and focuses back in on the present.

“I think we’re already going to be cramped with all of us huddled in there, anyway. I’ll sit on Niall’s lap, or something.”

Louis recoils like he’s been slapped before composing his expression into something more neutral. Harry barely has time to wonder what it means before he’s saying, “Oh, I thought it would just be us tonight, but, um, I can call them if you—”

“No,” Harry rushes to cut him off. “Just us is fine. Perfect.” He winces at how overeager he sounds. 

Louis purses his lips and glances around the room before meeting Harry’s eyes. He gives him a tight-lipped smile and reaches for the blankets again. “Cool. So, want to help me build the fort?”

Almost three hours later, they’ve finished one movie and started a second one, burned themselves on the brownies straight out of the oven, and knocked down the fort on three separate occasions. On the third time, when Louis knocked it down on his way back from the bathroom, they agreed it was probably for the best to leave it as is and covered themselves in the extra blankets.

Now, Harry’s worried he’s going to fall asleep like this. His eyes feel heavier with each blink and he thinks he might have missed a few scenes in the movie. If he lays in this spot any longer, he’s going to start snoring and Louis’ going to kick him out. If he was smart— or using his brain in any way— he would leave before he falls asleep on the ground, where he’ll either stay there all night and hurt his back, or Louis will have to awkwardly ask him to go home. He should head out before he overstays his welcome.

Of course, he doesn’t listen to the rational side of his brain, his eyes fluttering shut for the last time, and he misses the last half of the movie.

*

In the morning, Harry wakes up slowly, eyes glued shut as he starts to register the noise around him— the whir of the outdated air conditioning, the chirping of the birds on the windowsill, quiet snores next to his ear. 

His eyes snap open.

Frozen in place, he takes in the situation he’s found himself in. Louis’ arms wrap tightly around his waist, holding him in place, mouth almost pressed against his ear. He has no idea what time it is, but he knows it’s morning by the way the light hesitantly creeps in through the big bay window. He doesn’t think his alarm’s gone off yet, so he’s not late for his shift at the cafe, but he also has no idea how to get out of the situation he’s found himself in. 

Does he wait for Louis to wake up? Does he wake Louis up himself? Does he try to sneak out as quietly as he can? 

He spends so long debating his choices that in the end, the decision is made for him. Louis wakes up slowly, arms tightening around Harry’s middle as he snuggles in closer and stretches out his legs. He presses his nose gently to the back of Harry’s neck before he finally releases him and rolls over onto his back.

“Morning,” Louis mumbles, voice deep with sleep, eyes not yet open.

“Morning,” Harry replies. He sides-eyes Louis, waiting for him to realize the position they’d woken up in.

Louis’ eyes flutter open, his head turning until he’s staring at Harry, an almost smile pulling at his lips. “Sorry about, you know.” He gestures between them. “You know I’ve always been a cuddler. I meant to head upstairs, but I must have fallen asleep down here with you.”

“Yeah, I—” Harry clears his throat, trying again, “Yeah, I meant to go home, but obviously that plan didn’t work out. Thanks for letting me crash on your floor.”

“I was gonna wake you because I was worried about your back, sleeping on the floor, but then you looked so peaceful,” Louis admits, looking sheepish. He shrugs the best as he can while still laying down. “So, if your back is sore, you can feel free to blame it on me.”

Harry laughs quietly, still not entirely convinced he’s not dreaming. There’s a layer of awkwardness they’re still working through, but not as much as he would have expected. It almost reminds him of the morning after they slept together for the first time, when they were both so unsure of what the other was going to say, afraid of scaring each other off. 

Harry’s phone alarm cuts through the small silence that’s started to settle around, causing both of them to startle. He reaches to turn it off, not bothering to check any of the messages waiting for him on the home screen. 

“I should, um, I should head out,” Harry says awkwardly, sitting up and wincing as his back cracks. “I’ve got to go to work, unfortunately.”

Louis’ hand twitches where it lays against his stomach, almost as if he wants to reach out. He doesn’t let it, keeping it firmly in place as he follows Harry with his eyes, watching him as he stands and gathers his things. The house is just as inviting in the early morning sunshine, hesitant rays of light slowly brightening the room.

“Do this again soon, yeah?” Louis calls after him as he turns to leave, and Harry twists back to give him a smile before heading out the door. If he’d stayed any longer, he’s worried he would have said ‘screw it’, called off work, and climbed back into the mess of blankets and pillows with Louis for the rest of the day.

He gets ready for work in a daze, showering quickly and throwing on comfortable clothes. Like usual, the cafe is empty when he steps inside, just moments before they open for the day. Zayn’s already knocked out the cleaning checklist, by the looks of it, leaning casually against the counter as he scrolls through his phone. He looks up when Harry walks in, bell overhead chiming.

“Good morning,” he greets, sliding his phone into his back pocket. “Have a nice night?”

Harry narrows his eyes suspiciously but continues his routine of clocking in, washing his hands, and preparing his coffee. While he mixes in the flavoring, he responds, “Yeah. Nothing too crazy. Did you?”

“Liam and I had dinner at his place because Niall had to work the closing shift at the ice cream shop and you and Louis both said you were busy,” Zayn says. He shrugs and pushes himself off the counter, walking over to the door and flipping the sign from open to close. Nothing happens, of course. Nobody will probably be in for another thirty minutes, when Miss Lisa stops in for her daily bagel and tea after yoga.

Harry makes a sound in the back of his throat, hoping it comes off as casual, that Zayn won’t ask him what he was so busy with last night.

No such luck.

“So what’d you get up to? There’s not a lot to do around here.”

Harry tries to gauge whether Zayn is onto him or not, but he can’t tell. He’s got a great poker face, something that Harry knows from years of forcing him to lie to their moms about whatever adventure they were going to get wrapped up in. 

“Erm—” Harry pauses and purses his lips, debating. After a few seconds, he sighs and relaxes. He might as well be honest. “I hung out with Louis, actually.”

Zayn freezes, cup of coffee poised halfway between his mouth and the counter. He recoils like Harry’s told him some truly surprising news. “You what?”

“I was, you know, hanging out at Louis’.”

“And what for?”

“What do you mean  _ what for _ ? Because we’re friends,” Harry protests weakly.

“Like three days ago you were avoiding him like he was going to rip your head off if you ran into him,” Zayn points out. “What changed?”

“It wasn’t like three days ago,” Harry grumbles. Louder, he says, “I don’t know. We said we were going to make an effort, and he just texted me and asked if I wanted to hang out last night. I don’t really have a good explanation for you. We ate brownies, watched movies, and fell asleep on the floor.”

“Like, together?”

“And that’s so hard to believe?”

“Yes, actually.”

Harry rolls his eyes. 

“I’m just worried about you guys,” Zayn says, matching Harry’s eye roll. “Less than a month ago you were avoiding him and there was no way any of us thought we’d get you in the same room together by the end of summer.”

“Well,” Harry says, trailing off. Realistically, he knows Zayn makes valid points. Maybe he and Louis are jumping back too quickly into their friendship, but he can’t seem to hit the brakes to slow down even just a little bit. “If I told you to trust me, would you?”

“No questions asked,” Zayn says without hesitation. 

“Then, I’m telling you, just trust me,” Harry reassures him, but he’s not so sure he’s telling the truth even as he says the words.

*

It’s like hanging out with Louis alone has demolished all hesitation they still harbored about their friendship. They fall back into it head first, hanging out every free moment they can. Harry stops into the bookstore when he gets off at the cafe, and Louis always stops in for coffee in the morning before he heads to work. They stay up too late talking, whether on the phone or on Louis’ couch, and Louis even mentioned in passing that he wanted to go on a picnic sometime soon.

Harry’s unsure of how to feel about it, but like most conflicts he’s facing, he pushes it down and decides to ignore it until he no longer can.

While Zayn makes a knowing, smug face every morning that Louis stops in, he doesn’t say anything about the way they’re growing closer every day. Even when they hang out as a group, Harry and Louis are all over each other, off in their own little world. Judging by the looks Liam and Niall give each other, it’s fairly obvious to everyone.

While Harry knows this is dangerous, to let himself fall so easily into their friendship— and his feelings for Louis, if he’s really being honest with himself— he just can’t seem to stop himself. He tells himself that he’s going to stay home, not go to the bookstore after work, not have a movie night at Louis’, but then it’s all out the door the moment his phone buzzes. Even if he  _ wanted _ to, he doesn’t think he could stay away from Louis.

As if thinking about Louis conjures him, Harry’s phone buzzes with a text.

_ picnic tonight???? _

Harry bites his lip, hoping maybe that’ll do something to stop the smile that feels like it’s going to split his face in half.

_ What should I pack?  _ Harry texts back eagerly. He would be ashamed of himself, of the way his heart flutters in his chest and his stomach tightens, if Louis didn’t respond just as quickly.

_ just yourself, meet me at our spot at seven _

Harry tucks his phone back into his pocket and tries to make it through the rest of his day without vibrating through his skin.

The last summer Harry spent in Portland, he and Louis spent almost every night at their spot. They would go from the bonfire with Liam and Zayn to further down the beach, to the perfect spot with the view of the water and the lights coming from the town. It’s where they shared their first kiss, the moon making its descent in the sky, sounds of the ocean waves going in and out in the background, when it was so dark they could barely see each other, but Harry could feel Louis’ shaky exhale against his lips.

Harry hasn’t been back since he landed in Portland almost two months ago, avoiding even thinking about it. It holds too many memories— their kiss, obviously, but also where they came out to each other, where Louis cried when he found out his parents were getting divorced, where they both got drunk for the first time. 

Muscle memory leads him to the spot perfectly, stopping when he notices Louis sitting there already, spread out on a blanket with a basket next to him.

Louis turns his head just enough to glance at Harry from the corner of his eye. “Are you just gonna stand there all night and stare at me or are you planning on joining me so we can eat?”

Harry laughs, just quiet enough that he doesn’t think Louis can hear him. He walks the rest of the way over to the blanket, kicking off his shoes after he plops down. The amount of sand that flies out is horrifying, but he’s quickly distracted by the amount of food Louis starts pulling from the basket.

“I didn’t know what you would want, but I packed us stuff to make sandwiches and have a lot of fruit.” He pulls out a bottle and holds it up, wicked grin twisting his lips. “I also brought wine.”

“Perfect,” Harry says, softly, suddenly feeling shy. 

“No cups, though, so we’re sharing the bottle.”

“Just like when we were sixteen.”

Louis pauses, opener twisted halfway into the cork, eyebrows raised. “How did we not get caught with how much alcohol we stole from Mary?”

“I think she probably knew,” Harry says, shrugging. “Not sure she cared, though. She knew we weren’t out driving around.”

“She probably knows way more than we think,” Louis mumbles, managing to get the cork out with a  _ pop. _ “I don’t know how sneaky two teengers can really be.”

“Not sneaky at all,” Harry says, laughing. 

“I appreciate her letting us think that we had our secrets.” Louis raises the wine bottle, nodding, a silent toast to Mary before he leans his head back and takes a sip. Harry isn’t strong enough to keep himself from watching the bob of his throat as he swallows. He hands over the bottle wordlessly, wiping his lips dry with the back of his hand.

While Harry takes a sip of the wine, a sweet, subtly flavored watermelon wine, Louis works on setting up their plates. He portions out the strawberries, watermelon slices, and sandwiches. He’s done a good job, even going so far to pack them cookies from the bakery downtown. 

“It’s, um, it’s nice to hang out with you again.” When Louis raises an eyebrow and doesn’t say anything, Harry adds, “Like this. I missed, you know,  _ this _ .” He gestures between them with a hand, hoping Louis understands.

And because he’s Louis, of course he does. He’s always understood Harry, even when Harry doesn’t understand himself. His expression softens and he passes over Harry’s plate. “I missed you. Although—” He pauses, expression twisting like he’s fighting back a smirk, “I’m still mad at you for being a shit.”

“I’ll spend the rest of my life making it up to you,” Harry says earnestly. “Pinky promise.”

“Pinky promise? That’s serious,” Louis teases. He reaches over and grabs Harry by the wrist, waiting until he unclenches his fist, intertwining their pinkies together. He kisses the pad of his thumb, watching as Harry does the same, pressing their thumbs together. Harry’s reluctant to let go, but eventually he does, if only because his stomach growls too loudly to ignore.

Louis hands him the plate of food, and they eat in comfortable silence, watching people pass. Harry finishes his plate first, staring longingly at Louis’ plate still half-full of fruit. Louis catches him and holds up a strawberry.

Without thinking, Harry reaches over and bites it right out of his fingers. And as if he couldn’t make it weirder, he leans in and sucks the juice off of Louis’ fingers, pulling off and face heating as he realizes what he’s done.

“Well,” Louis says, clearing his throat, a matching blush across his cheeks. “That’s one way to do it, I guess.”

  
  


When he stumbles in as Mary’s getting ready to leave for yoga, he’s tipsy off something other than the wine. He can’t wipe the dreamy look from his eyes, and Mary gives him a knowing smile but otherwise leaves him alone as he silently climbs the stairs. 

He’s asleep as soon as his head hits the pillow, wine-stained pink lips dancing their way into every single one of his dreams.

*

On Harry’s next day off, Mary wakes him up just after the sun’s risen to force him to go with her to her morning workout class. He mumbles some form of agreement, manages to put his shoes on the right feet, and barely makes it through the class with his eyes glued half-shut.

On their walk home, she promises to take the route by the cafe to pick up coffee and pastries and that makes it all worth it to Harry.

“What do you want for dinner tonight?” she asks casually. 

He kicks at a rock in his path, watching it bounce across the road before coming to a stop. “Ravioli?”

“Okay,” she agrees. “It’s just going to be me and you, kiddo.”

This gets Harry’s attention. He looks up from the ground, trying to keep his eyebrows from raising too high. “Wait— why?”

By her knowing smirk, Harry doesn’t think he succeeds too well in trying to keep his expression casual, but Mary’s always been able to read him well. 

“He’s apparently got an event going on at the bookstore tonight,” she explains. “It’s going to run late and then he’s got to stay to clean up, so he told me not to worry about it.”

“Oh,” Harry says, attempting to keep the disappointment out of his voice. 

She reaches over and elbows him gently in the side. “Don’t sound too upset, kid. We can still have a nice night. Drink a little wine, maybe watch some trashy reality television. I’ll pick us up some cupcakes or something from that new bakery that opened up downtown. How’s that sound?”

“Perfect,” he says, and he means it. While he might be a little disappointed that Louis won’t be joining them, he does always love a nice night in with his aunt. 

Zayn doesn’t bother charging them for their coffees and pastries, waving Mary off when she tries to pull out her wallet. He claims it’s because Harry does such a good job when working, but all three of them know it’s because Zayn loves Mary just like she’s his aunt too. 

The rest of his Sunday passes by too slowly, as boring as those first few days of summer before he fell back into friendship with Louis and the others. He spends half the day flipping through shows on Netflix, disinterested at best, and laying half-asleep on the couch in the sunroom. When he gets too warm, laying directly in the path of the hazy sunbeams, he heads back inside, where he continues his nap in his bed. 

It’s not his most productive day of the summer, but he enjoys catching up on the sleep he’s been missing since his nights have been filled with drinking around a fire, movie nights at Zayn’s, and staying up late on Louis’ front porch. 

Mary wakes him up when she finishes cooking dinner, shaking him gently until he opens his eyes. She laughs at his dazed expression, asking him if he’ll set the table while she finishes up. 

Dinner is a quiet affair, as it usually is when it’s just the two of them. She fills him in on the people she worked with, a young recently engaged couple who couldn’t stop staring at each other, but Harry doesn’t have much to contribute. He tells her that he didn’t even manage to get through a full episode of one show, nothing able to keep his interest quite well enough.

“Boring day without Louis to fill it up, huh?” she teases, but she’s  _ right _ .

Louis’ been taking up so much of his time that without him, the day has felt empty and long, dragging on. He just wants to be able to go to bed for the night and wake up tomorrow, where at least he’ll have a shift at the cafe to take up some of his time. 

He only sighs in response, giving her enough of an answer, before standing up and starting to clear the table. Just like every night, she tries to help him clean up, and just like always he waves her off. She stills sticks around to keep him company, sipping a bit of wine out of her favorite coffee mug. He hears his phone buzz, but doesn’t bother checking it, elbow deep in scrubbing their plates. 

“You got a text from Louis,” Mary says, and when Harry tilts his head to glance at her, she’s holding it up and reading from the screen.

“And what’s he saying, nosy?” 

He almost misses her smirk, quickly hidden behind the mug as she takes another sip. “He asked if you want to come to the beach tonight. Your spot?”

Done rinsing off their dishes, he spins around, leaning his lower back against the sink. He takes note of her quirked eyebrow and tries to keep the flush from rising to his cheeks. He shrugs as nonchalantly as he can.

“We have a spot,” he says. 

“I can read.”

“Then I’m not sure what you’re asking me here.”

“Alright, sure, if that’s how you want to play it,” she says, finishing off her mug of wine. She stands and walks over, setting it in the sink. “He says to meet him there in fifteen, by the way.”

“Oh, fuck,” he curses quietly, pushing himself off the counter and heading in the direction of the stairs. He pauses, halfway across the room, turning and smiling at Mary. “Don’t wait up for me?”

She laughs and waves him out of the room, promising that she won’t be staying up late waiting around for him.

Twenty minutes later, and five minutes late from when Louis told him to be there, Harry stumbles up to their spot, nearly tripping over his feet in his haste to not make Louis wait any longer. 

“Hey, curly,” Louis says, spread out across the blanket he’s laid out on the ground. There’s already sand starting to invade onto the fabric, inevitable when hanging out at the beach. “Thought you might not show.”

“And why wouldn’t I show?” 

“Just teasing!” Louis laughs, patting the space next to him. 

Harry plops down, spraying even more sand in all directions. He takes note of the basket, hoping Louis packed something sweet. His prayers are answered when Louis pulls out a tupperware of chocolate chip cookies and a bottle of that watermelon wine they’ve been drinking all summer. 

“Oh, bless you,” Harry murmurs, reaching for the container of cookies.

“Bless me?” Louis snorts. “You sound like my grandma when you talk like that.”

“And you find it hopelessly endearing; don’t try to deny it.” He reaches over and pokes a finger in Louis’ cheek, feeling it move as he smiles, crinkles forming by his blue eyes. Though not quite the same color as the sea, Harry thinks he could get lost in them just as easily.

“Did Mary miss me at dinner tonight?” Louis asks, taking a bite of a cookie and covering his mouth as he chews. 

“Oh, of course. She was  _ beside _ herself. I, on the other hand, didn’t even notice you were missing.”

Louis chokes on his next bite of cookie, laughing the best he can as he tries to swallow it.

“Whatever helps you sleep at night,” Louis says. 

Harry takes a sip of wine from the bottle. They never bring cups, passing the bottle between them, less careful than they were at sixteen when they would pour it into reusable water bottles to pack with them. 

“How was your, er, whatever you were doing tonight?” Harry asks, passing over the bottle.

Louis snorts. “My  _ whatever _ I was doing tonight was my monthly children’s book club I do. That’s why I have these cookies, so don’t feel too special. They’re leftovers from one of the parents.”

“Darn. Just as I was starting to think you liked me,” Harry deadpans. 

“As if I could ever,” Louis laughs, reaching over and shoving gently at Harry’s shoulder.

The quickly dimming sunlight makes Harry brave. As Louis’ hand slips off of his shoulder, leaving behind a tangible fuzzy warmth, he clears his throat. “Will you miss me?”

To his credit, Louis doesn’t react to the question. His expression remains the same, a hint of a small smile on his lips and casual slump to his shoulders as he hugs his knees up to his chest. 

“Is it going to be like last time?” he asks.

“No,” Harry says earnestly, shaking his head. “No, it won’t. I’m going to call you so much you’ll get sick of me.”

“Don’t know if that’s possible,” Louis admits, chuckling softly. 

Harry can feel it in the air that something’s shifted between them. If he had more wine in his system, he’d probably lean over and try to kiss Louis, so he denies the bottle when Louis tries to hand it over. 

“If you promise you’ll call, then I promise I’ll miss you,” Louis finally whispers.

“Then we have ourselves a deal,” Harry agrees. 

They settle into a comfortable silence, and he reaches for the wine bottle, changing his mind. He’s allowed to make bad decisions sometimes.

Harry isn’t quite sure what wakes him up at first, sand stuck uncomfortably to his cheek. As he stretches out, he realizes he’s definitely not laying in his soft mattress. He also realizes that it’s  _ Louis _ shaking him awake, hand gentle on his shoulder as he whispers something Harry can’t quite make out.

He sits up slowly, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes. He can just barely force himself to mumble something unintelligible, mouth dry. 

“We fell asleep out here,” Louis says, and Harry’s finally awake enough to understand him. 

“Oh,” he replies, still barely above a whisper. “My back is going to hate me, then.”

“Yeah, I heard the way it popped when you sat up.”

Harry hums quietly. The sun hasn’t quite peeked its head out from over the horizon of the water, hints of oranges and yellows bleeding into the leftover dark night sky. It must be just after six, if he remembers correctly from when they were younger, falling asleep under the stars nightly and waking up just before sunrise to sneak back into their houses.

“I know you’ve probably got work in a few hours, so you’d love nothing more than to get a bit more sleep in a real bed, but um—” Louis coughs, clearing his throat. “Would you want to stay just a few more minutes to watch the sunrise with me? We never got to enjoy it much when we were kids, too worried about getting caught sneaking back in and all.”

“Um, yeah, sure,” Harry says, reaching up and rubbing the last bits of sleep out of his eyes. “Of course.”

“Cool.” Louis nods his head, sitting all the way up and wrapping his arms around his knees, hugging them to his chest. “Thanks.”

Harry can probably count on one hand the amount of beach sunrises he’s gotten to watch. Mary dragged him out one time to watch it, one of the first summers he stayed with her, but he complained so much about being awake that she never tried to do it again. Other than that, he’s seen slivers of them as he and Louis darted down the path to their houses, holding hands and laughing maniacally. 

“Hey, Louis?” Harry says, breaking the silence that’s fallen over them. 

Louis turns his head, eyebrow raised. The slowly rising sun has started to cast a golden light over him, and Harry doesn’t think he was too far from the truth all those times he compared Louis to sunshine. 

“Yeah?”

“Thanks for being my friend again.”

“Did you think I wouldn’t?”

Harry shakes his head. He lays back down on the blanket on his back, able to watch the changing colors if he cranes his neck just right. “I don’t know. I was a dick. You didn’t have to forgive me, but you did. And, um, I just think that was really cool of you.”

Louis unwraps his arms from around his legs, laying back until he’s flat on the blanket, shoulder so close to Harry’s they’re practically sharing body heat. Harry can see him shift out of the corner of his eye, but can’t tell exactly what he’s doing until there’s a pinky wrapping around his own. Louis’ skin is soft and warm, pinky gentle wrapped around Harry’s.

“Thanks for watching this with me,” Louis finally says. 

Harry decides staying here, back aching from the firm ground, is ten times better than going back to bed would have been, anyway.

*

The days pass by so quickly, it feels like all Harry has to do is blink and another week has gone by. While he wasn’t quite sure what to expect from the summer, he knows he could never have imagined any of it. At best, he expected to spend his days reading at the beach and hanging out with Mary every night until she was so sick of him that she was ready to send him home. 

However, he’s actually barely seen her this summer, apart from their nightly dinners. They’re both gone during the day and he almost always has plans for after dinner now, slipping out as soon as the dishes are cleaned up to meet the group or just Louis at the beach. He’s trying to cherish the last little sliver of time he has, spending as much of it with as many people as he can (and getting as little sleep as possible in the process).

Which is how he finds himself agreeing to spend yet another night out on the beach with Louis, meeting him at their spot just as the sun starts to set behind the trees. 

“Honestly, at this point, I’m not sure what I’d do if you just didn’t text me and ask me to hang out one night,” Harry says, coming to a stop at the edge of the blanket. He kicks off his shoes before plopping down, wincing as sand sprays everywhere. “Every night, like clockwork you tell me to meet you out here. Do you think the boys are starting to feel neglected?”

“They can deal,” Louis says with a quiet laugh. “They won’t be able to get rid of me once you’re gone. I’ll be so upset that I’ll need all the comfort I can get.”

“Right, right,” Harry hums, nodding. 

Louis clears his throat. “But, um, there is something that I kind of wanted to talk to you about?”

Harry’s pulse starts racing, mind immediately jumping to the worst conclusions. Has Louis decided he doesn’t want to be Harry’s friend any more? Is he taking it back? Is Harry about to spend the last few weeks of this summer miserable just like his first few weeks, avoiding Louis at every turn?

“Um, what’s up?” he asks, trying to keep his voice as even as possible.

Instead of a verbal answer, Louis reaches over and grabs him by the cheeks, pulling him in harshly for a kiss. Harry makes a surprised noise in the back of his throat, and Louis starts to pull away, but Harry grabs ahold of his shoulders and holds him close, finally relaxing his lips into the kiss. 

It feels like no time at all has passed since their last kiss, lips fitting together easily, hands exploring over each other’s bodies. Harry hasn’t allowed himself to think about kissing Louis in a long time, too afraid of the memories it would bring to the surface, but this is better than he remembered it feeling. 

Louis makes a soft noise in the back of his throat, reaching up and steadying himself with his hands on Harry’s shoulders. Harry takes the opportunity to wrap his arms around Louis’ waist and pull him until he’s seated on the tops of Harry’s thighs. Louis’ hands shift from his shoulders to his hair, tangling his fingers in the long strands, tugging gently. 

Harry opens his mouth in a low moan, trying to pull Louis closer by the small of his back. Louis gives his hair another tug, pulling his head back sharply. Their lips disconnect as Harry gasps, eyes fluttering. He forgot how well Louis knowing him translates into things like this— knowing each other's likes, dislikes, the way their bodies respond. 

Louis rolls his hips, grinding down, matching each slow grind with a sharp tug of Harry’s hair. “I missed this.”

“Me too,” Harry manages to get out, barely able to keep his eyes open. He wants to lock every second into his memory forever, documenting the way Louis’ eyelashes flutter against his cheekbones, the quiet moans he allows to slip out. 

“Could never forget how responsive you are,” Louis murmurs, leaning in and nipping at Harry’s neck. 

“If you leave a mark, Mary’s never going to let me hear the end of it,” Harry says.

“Please don’t bring up your aunt right now.”

“Noted,” Harry says, laughing quietly. His laughter is quickly silenced as Louis grinds his hips down again, punctuating it with another bite to his neck. Through his thin athletic shorts, he can feel everything, the way they’ve both started to get hard, grinding against each other, just trying to get closer than they already are.

Harry lets his hands slide from Louis’ back from his hips, rucking up the hem of his t-shirt to feel his warm skin. They’re both slick with sweat, warm in the Texas heat despite the absence of the sun from the sky. 

Harry lets out a particularly loud whine when Louis grinds down more firmly, kissing up his neck to his jawline. 

“Baby,” Louis whispers, pressing more kisses to his jawline. “Baby, you’re so beautiful.”

Unable to form words, Harry just grips tighter at Louis’ hips, trying to pull him closer despite the way their shoulders to their thighs are pressed together. He’s so close to the edge he should feel embarrassed, but he only feels warm, a flush spreading across his chest and cheeks. It seems Louis might be close too, hips stuttering and breathing gone ragged.

Louis connects their lips again, softening his hold in Harry’s hair, scratching his nails over his scalp. With one more press of his hips, Harry comes, spilling into his shorts. He moans into Louis’ open mouth, hissing at the overstimulation as Louis continues his motions. As he spills over the edge, he gives one last sharp tug of Harry’s hair, and it’s almost enough to make him hard again.

Their kissing turns less fervent, slow presses of their lips together as Louis’ hands soothe over Harry’s body. Harry lets his arms wrap around Louis’ waist, holding him close.

Louis pulls away, resting his forehead against Harry’s. “Reminds you of that summer before you went off to school, huh?” he says, just the right side of breathlessly.

“Yeah,” Harry, replies, just as breathless. He swallows, watching Louis’ eyes follow the movement. “One request, though.”

“Yeah?”

“Do we have to sleep out on the ground like we did that summer?” Harry asks. “Or can we move to a bed? Also, can I borrow clothes to sleep in?”

“And who said you’re sleeping with me, Styles?” Louis teases, climbing from Harry’s lap and dusting sand from his bare legs. He reaches a hand down and helps Harry to his feet. 

Harry gives him a teasing shove, gripping his wrist when he worries that Louis’ going to topple onto the sand. “I need a big spoon and you’re the only one around.”

“Hmm,” Louis hums, but a smile tugs at the corners of his lips. He reaches over and curls his pinky around Harry’s, connecting their hands. 

They’re silent the rest of the walk home, pinkies still connected. Louis unlocks his door and doesn’t even bother to turn on the lights before he clambers up the stairs. He never bothered to move into the master bedroom once his family moved out, staying in his childhood bedroom. He’s given it an update, though, painting the walls a more neutral color and trading out the soccer posters for paintings he bought at the art gallery downtown.

Louis gives him a spare toothbrush and a pair of sweatpants that might actually be Harry’s that he left the last time he stayed over. When Harry’s done in the bathroom, Louis’ already waiting for him in the bed, tucked under the covers and scrolling through his phone while he waits for Harry to join him. Harry climbs under the sheets, tucking himself in Louis’ arms.

“Should we talk about it?” Louis whispers into the dark.

“In the morning,” Harry mumbles, already almost asleep.

*

They don’t talk in the morning, Harry jolting awake to the sound of his alarm for work. He jumps out of bed, pressing a kiss to Louis’ temple, running down the stairs and out the door. He takes as speedy of a shower as he can, scrubbing sand out of places he wishes sand would never be, changing into his work clothes and jogging most of the way there.

“Why are you all sweaty and out of breath?” Zayn asks as soon as he walks through the door, wrinkling his eyebrows.

“I was running late,” Harry explains. “So I tried to get here as quickly as I could.”

“I say this as a good friend,” Zayn says, reaching over and squeezing Harry’s shoulder. “It has never been that serious. We don’t even usually get a single customer for the first half an hour to an hour and a half. You can be a few minutes late.”

“Noted,” Harry laughs.

He feels his phone buzz in his pocket, and he pulls it out, Louis’ name popping up on the screen. He tucks it into his pocket without checking the message. 

“You’re also allowed to text people back,” Zayn says. “I think I’m a pretty fair boss.”

“You are,” Harry assures him, though he has a feeling Zayn doesn’t care either way.

“Not someone important?”

“It’s just Louis.” Harry shrugs. “No rush.”

Zayn squints at him suspiciously. “What happened?”

“What do you mean, what happened?”

“I know you, idiot. What did you do?”

Harry bites the inside of his lip as he debates what to tell Zayn. He could lie or be as vague as possible, but he has no idea what Louis would tell him, so he decides it’s in his best interests to tell the truth.

“We hooked up,” he finally says.

“Oh.” Zayn leans back against the counter, crossing his arms. “I thought you already did that.”

“Why would you think that?” Harry asks.

Zayn shrugs. “I don’t know. I thought you guys were trying out the whole dating thing.”

Harry coughs, clearing his throat. He debates his next words, unsure himself of what he wants to say. He finally settles on, “We haven’t talked. I maybe was going to start freaking out so I guess it’s a good thing you know how to read me so well. I don’t know what I’m going to say to him.”

“The truth,” Zayn deadpans.

“And that is?”

Zayn snorts. “Shouldn’t you know that?”

“No, I don’t—” Harry shakes his head, trying to clear it. “I don’t  _ know _ .”

“Alright. I’ve got some tough advice for you.”

Harry narrows his eyes at him. “I’m not sure I want to hear it.”

“Tough shit. You ready?”

Harry nods, leaning back against the counter and using his arms to prop himself up. He’s not too sure he’s actually ready for whatever Zayn’s going to say, but he knows he probably needs to hear it.

“Your problem is that you guys never  _ talk _ . Not about the things you need to. Literally, all of your problems could be solved by just actually communicating. You guys are like every bad romcom out there—”

“—Hey,” Harry tries to interrupt, but Zayn holds up a hand to stop him.

“But you are! I’m so sick of watching you guys create problems that literally wouldn’t exist if you actually talked about things. I guarantee you’re on the same fucking page about everything so I don’t know what you’re so fucking afraid of.”

“Are you done?” Harry asks. Zayn nods, motioning for him to go on. He takes a deep breath before saying, “You’re right.”

Zayn looks as if that’s the last thing in the whole world he was expecting Harry to say. “I’m right?”

Harry nods. “You are. So I guess I’ll go over there after work and talk to him. For real this time. Tell him everything— what I was so afraid of that summer I ran away, how I feel about him still, and what I want going forward.”

“Like mature adults.”

Harry snorts. “If that’s what you would like to call it.”

“Hey,” Zayn says, tone turning serious. “I love you, okay? And maybe you’re nervous, but you have no reason to be. Louis is as head over heels for you as you are for him. I promise.”

“Thanks,” Harry says, sighing, shoulders slumping. He didn’t know how much he needed this talk with Zayn until now.

“In summary, get your shit together and get to work,” Zayn says, face cracking into a smile as he hands Harry a baking tray. Harry takes it from him just as their first customer comes in. Harry settles into the routine of working, easily distracted from his thoughts for the rest of his shift. 

When he gets off, a nervous flutter starts to build in his stomach, faster and faster the closer he gets to home. He decides to change before he knocks on Louis’ door, unsure if the man is even going to be home from his shift at the bookstore. 

The house is empty when he steps inside, the blast of air conditioning immediately causing goosebumps to rise on his sweaty skin. He darts up the stairs, changing into shorts and a light t-shirt, reapplying his deodorant and brushing his teeth. He has no idea what to expect, but he thinks he has a better chance for a good outcome if he doesn’t smell poorly.

He runs back down the stairs and out the front door, pausing when he gets to the end of Louis’ driveway. He stands there for a few seconds, long enough to debate whether he should turn around, before the front door opens and the decision to stay is made for him.

“Are you going to stand there all day or come inside?” Louis asks, leaning against the doorway and crossing his arms.

“Are you inviting me inside?” Harry gasps. “How scandalous! What would the neighbors think?”

Louis rolls his eyes and takes a step back inside the house. “Just shut up and come inside before I change my mind.”

Harry walks up the driveway, able to feel his heartbeat in his throat. He’s not so sure what he’s nervous about. Louis has given no indication that this conversation is going to go poorly— if anything, all signs would point to the fact that conversation is probably going to end very well.

The door clicks softly behind him as he steps inside, kicking his shoes off just in the entryway. Louis isn’t in the living room or kitchen as far as he can see, so he assumes the man is upstairs. 

He holds onto the railing as he climbs, shaking, nervous excitement running through his veins. It feels so much like the nights he would sneak back into Louis’ after their nights at the beach, creeping carefully and avoiding the loud stairs, stumbling over each other as they stopped to make out, unable to help themselves.

Louis’ in his room, perched on the edge on his bed as he waits. He smiles softly when Harry enters the room, patting the space beside him on the bed. 

“Should I be nervous about this conversation?” Harry asks as he sits down. 

Louis furrows his eyebrows. “Why would you be nervous?”

Harry feels his shoulders slump in relief. “Overthinking, I guess.”

“I don’t think there’s anything to be nervous about,” Louis reassures him. He reaches over and hooks his pinky with Harry’s, similar to the way he did when they walked home last night. “I’m going to put the ball in your court and ask what you want from this. Is this just until these last few weeks together are up and then we go back to not speaking?”

“No. No!” Harry defends, shaking his head. “I already told you that wasn’t how this was going to work.”

Louis’ face softens. “Then how is this going to work?”

“Louis, can I admit something to you?” Harry asks.

“Of course. You can tell me anything.”

“When I left that summer, I was a totally different person than I am right now. There are similar aspects between me and that kid, but I’ve grown so much. I was a dumb stupid kid whose family couldn’t show love to such a big part of who I am. I couldn’t have the best summer of my life and go back to a world where I was pretending. I couldn’t have just a part of you. I couldn’t go back and not be allowed to be myself and also have you in life after that summer. I couldn’t give you all of myself and that’s what you deserved. You didn’t deserve a fraction of me and my feelings for you. So I’m sorry, I went about it all wrong, but I’m not that kid anymore. I’m not afraid.” 

Harry exhales, a weight lifted from his shoulders. He feels better now that he’s said it all, not even anxious as he waits for Louis to process it and respond.

“I love you,” Louis finally says. “Like I am so hopefully gone for you. Do you know that?”

Harry laughs, loud and unexpected, pulled from him. He throws a hand over his mouth as he lets out a few more giggles. He recollects himself but can’t keep the smile from his face. 

“I love you, too.” His lips twitch, trying to spread even wider. “It feels good to say that out loud.”

Louis leans forward and presses a light kiss to his lips, both of them trying to tame their smiles. 

“And where does the end of summer put us?” Louis finally asks.

Harry puffs up his cheeks and exhales loudly. “Obviously I’m going back to school,  _ but _ I think we can make it work. Especially considering I’ll be coming back here after graduation anyway.”

Louis recoils, eyebrows raising. “Wait, what?”

“Yeah, I—” He takes a deep breath, collecting himself. Louis tangles the rest of their fingers, giving his hand a reassuring squeeze. “I’ve felt so lost for so long? And it just got worse those years I stayed away. Coming back has helped me realize this is the one place I’ve never felt lost.”

“So you’ll come back?”

“Promise,” Harry says, nodding. 

Louis leans over and plants a firmer kiss on his lips, pulling him in closer by their joined hands. When he pulls away, he rests their foreheads together, matching smiles on their faces.

“Just so you know, I would have wanted to try this out even if you never planned on coming back here,” he says.

“Well, now you don’t have to worry about that.”

“I love you,” Louis repeats.

“I love you, too,” Harry says, and leans in to kiss Louis again, unsure if he’ll ever get enough of the feeling. 

*

Louis’ trunk slams shut, luggage hitting the concrete. Harry turns to face him, throwing his bag over his shoulder.

“You promise to miss me?” he asks, smirking. It’s probably the millionth time he’s asked the question just this morning.

“I promise,” Louis says, rolling his eyes.

“As cute as you two are,” Niall interrupts, popping up between them. “Harry has a flight to catch and I am absolutely sick of watching you two interact. I cannot even imagine how insufferable you will be after not seeing each for months.”

“Is it going to be months?” Harry asks, eyebrows pulling together. “Louis, aren’t you coming to see me Labor Day weekend? That’s only a few weeks away.”

“Jesus Christ,” Zayn mumbles. “Maybe you two finally getting your act together isn’t actually something I wanted.”

“You love me, Zaynie,” Harry says, reaching over and pinching at his cheeks. “Now, hug me and say goodbye because we’re holding up the line.”

Zayn, Liam, and Niall hug him in turn, holding him tightly and whispering encouragements in his ear. They all climb back in the car to give Louis and Harry their privacy, making kissy noises as they shut the doors. 

“I’ll miss you,” Louis whispers, like it’s a secret just for the two of them. 

“I’ll miss you too,” Harry says. He reaches over and brushes a stray strand of hair off Louis’ face. “I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

“This has been an amazing summer,” Harry says earnestly. “And I can’t wait for you to come to Maine and visit. When you come for fall break, the leaves will have started changing. It’s absolutely gorgeous.”

“I’m sure it’s beautiful,” Louis agrees. “Now kiss me and go before you miss your flight.”

“If I miss my flight, then I can stay longer,” Harry counters.

Louis laughs, eyes squinting. “I’m not sure how much Mary would appreciate that.”

Harry rolls his eyes, biting back a matching smile. 

Louis leans in, kissing him firmly and pulling him closer by his grip on Harry’s hips. They keep it clean enough for public, mouths mostly closed, just taking this opportunity to hold each other close one last time. When they break apart, foreheads resting together, Harry knows without looking that their friends are watching from inside the car.

“Go,” Louis whispers gently. 

“Okay,” Harry replies, just as softly. 

He holds on for a few more seconds before he lets go and takes a step back. He grabs his suitcase and starts in the direction of the entrance. He turns around just before he reaches the doorway, waving one last time at the car and trying to hold back his tears. He refuses to cry while they can still see him.

Inside, he goes through security easily enough and heads to his gate. He takes a seat, and finally alone with his thoughts, begins to feel the sadness of leaving settle over him. It’s a feeling he hasn’t felt since that last summer, when he sat in this same airport and told himself he didn’t think he could come back ever again. 

Before he can get too sad, though, his phone buzzes with a text. He pulls it out, unsure of who could be trying to reach him before a wide smile breaks out across his face. Louis’ contact photo immediately brightens his mood, a picture of the two of them snuggled up on his couch. 

_ Don’t be sad. See you soon. Love you lots. _

Harry smiles and replies. He knows everything will be just fine. 

**Author's Note:**

> literally this started out as me wanting to write beach picnic scenes and it turned into this  
> you can find me on tumblr [here](https://adoredontour.tumblr.com/) and you can find the fic post [here](https://adoredontour.tumblr.com/post/632235737573703680/this-towns-just-an-ocean-now-31k-written-for)


End file.
